[Editor’s note: “The Electric Vehicle Revolution Is Here Thanks to the Forever Battery” was previously published in January 2022. It has since been updated to include the most relevant information available.]
A concept image of a man charging a electric vehicle; EV; EV stocks
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Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) has a market cap near 900 billion and opened its Texas gigafactory in April. Lucid (NASDAQ:LCID) recently rolled out its first cars with 500-plus miles of driving range. In November 2021, Rivian (NASDAQ:RIVN) had the biggest initial public offering (IPO) since Meta (NASDAQ:FB). Every legacy automaker — from Ford (NYSE:F) to GM (NYSE:GM) to Volkswagen (OTCMKTS:VWAGY) — is investing tens of billions of dollars into electrifying their fleets.
The Electric Vehicle Revolution has unequivocally arrived.
But here’s the thing: It won’t go mainstream until we make better batteries.
The reality is that batteries make things work. But today’s versions are keeping electric vehicles from working as well as they could.
Sure, it seems counterintuitive, but it’s true. And to understand why, we need to take a quick trip back to chemistry class.
Electric Vehicle Battery Breakdown
Batteries comprise three things — a cathode, an anode and an electrolyte. Batteries work by promoting the flow of ions between the cathode and anode through the electrolyte.
Conventional lithium-ion batteries are currently the dominant status quo in smartphones, smartwatches, electric vehicles, so on and so forth. They are built on liquid battery chemistry.
That is, they comprise a solid cathode and anode with a liquid electrolyte solution connecting the two.
These batteries have worked wonders for years. But due to the constraints of liquid electrolytes, they are now reaching their limit in terms of energy cell density. That means if we want our devices to last longer and charge faster, we need a fundamentally different battery.
With solid-state batteries, the name pretty much says it all. Take the liquid electrolyte solution in conventional batteries. Compress it into a solid. Create a small, hyper-compact solid battery that — because it has zero wasted space — lasts far longer and charges far faster.
Of course, the implications of solid-state battery chemistry are huge.
Solid-state batteries could be the key to our phones sustaining power for days and smartwatches fully charging in seconds. And, yes, they could enable electric vehicles to drive for thousands of miles without needing to recharge.
That’s why solid-state batteries are dubbed by insiders as “forever batteries.” And they’re the critical technology needed to propel the Electric Vehicle Revolution into its next phase of supercharged growth.
But making solid-state batteries is a complex and costly science. And no one has figured out how to affordably or sustainably do it…
Until now.
Enter the Solid-State
Several promising tech startups have made significant technical progress over the past several years in the construction of viable, effective solid-state batteries. One of them — QuantumScape (NYSE:QS) — has basically solved the problem.
The biggest issue with solid-state batteries is something called dendrites. They’re small cracks that form in the solid electrolyte during charging and recharging. And eventually, they get so big that they short-circuit the battery. Thus, the big breakthrough in solid-state batteries lies in developing a solid electrolyte material that is dendrite-resistant.
About a year ago, QuantumScape said they had done just that and released internal testing data which illustrated as much. The stock soared from $10 to $130 in a matter of weeks.
But QuantumScape stock proceeded to collapse as investors began to question the legitimacy of the company’s internal data. After all, it had yet to be publicly verified by a third party. Maybe QuantumScape was exaggerating about its performance?
Such fears have disappeared over the past few months, though. Last year, QuantumScape released third-party testing data that validated its creation of small-scale solid-state batteries that work. And in its latest earnings report released in April, the company announced it has developed a16-layer solid-state battery cell. And it’s already endured over 500 charging cycles.
It’s truly incredible — world-changing, even…
The Final Word on the Electric Vehicle Revolution
The big picture here is that the technical progress being made in solid-state battery chemistry is not being overstated. It’s legitimate. It’s happening. And over the coming years, this emerging technology will transform the EV industry — and, indeed, the entire electronics world.
Some of the stock market’s biggest winners in the 2020s will be solid-state battery makers.
QuantumScape projects as one of those megawinners. But it won’t be alone. And in fact, it won’t be the biggest winner.
That title is reserved for a tiny unheard-of solid-state battery-maker whose stock is trading for less than $3 right now.
Less than $3 — and this company could change the world over the next decade.
The upside potential in this tiny stock is enormous — so big, in fact, that unlike QuantumScape, I can’t write its name in this post.
But I did just give a presentation about it at the landmark Hudson Theatre in Southern California.
