According to people familiar with the matter, Volkswagen is in negotiations with French solid-state battery supplier Blue Solutions to apply solid-state battery design to electric vehicles.
Volkswagen's move to expand cooperation options in this field shows that the development of solid-state battery technology faces a series of technical barriers. Solid-state batteries are regarded as the “holy grail” of electric vehicle batteries, and can be expected to achieve longer range and shorter charging times compared to traditional lithium-ion batteries.
A Blue Solutions spokesperson said the company is developing a passenger car battery and said it has signed a development agreement with BMW. The company said it was in talks with a third company, but declined to reveal the name of this company.
In addition to Volkswagen, Toyota, BMW, and other automakers are struggling to resolve the technical barriers faced by solid-state batteries. Despite decades of research and multi-billion dollar investments, solid-state batteries are still technically difficult to achieve.
The solid-state battery industry's lack of commercial success has taken a toll on market enthusiasm. According to PitchBook data, solid-state battery companies' global venture capital transactions fell 72% to US$146 million in 2023. Jeff Peters, partner at Ibex Investors, said: “Investors' interest in solid-state batteries has waned. They're questioning whether it's worth the risk.”
As the largest shareholder of QuantumScape, VW invested $300 million in the startup to help it develop solid-state batteries. The two sides reached a cooperation agreement in 2018 with the goal of using solid-state batteries in Volkswagen's electric vehicles by 2025. Although QuantumScape delivered its first prototypes to VW and other potential customers at the end of 2022, large-scale commercial production is still a distant prospect. Also, the batteries used in these prototypes were not pure solid state.
QuantumScape CEO Jagdeep Singh said, “We still have a lot of work to do. This prototype is meant to demonstrate core functionality, not that electric has completely eliminated all the different defects that may occur during production.” QuantumScape has yet to predict when large-scale commercial production will take place. Goldman Sachs said this could happen in the second half of this decade.
VW and QuantumScape aren't the only companies to lower expectations as they struggle to address the technical complexity of solid-state batteries. Toyota previously anticipated starting production of solid-state batteries in 2025, but said in June last year that it currently does not expect large-scale production of solid-state batteries until 2027 or 2028.
However, Toyota said it had made a technological breakthrough in solid-state batteries, but the company did not provide further details other than the estimated driving range of 750 miles or more and a 10-minute charging time. A number of other companies are also planning to launch solid-state batteries, including Ningde Era, LG New Energy, Solid Power, ProLogium, Honda, and Nissan.