QuantumScape Corporation (QS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thanks, everybody, for joining us again. Next up, we have QuantumScape. It is a company that was first formed, I think, in 2010, emerged with SPAC in 2020, focused on solid-state -- next-gen solid-state lithium batteries for electric vehicles. There's a lot of applications and there's a lot of opportunity, we think here. It's a very interesting company. We're very happy to have Kevin Hettrich, Chief Financial Officer, here today. He is going to talk about -- a lot about financials, but also a lot about technology, right? So Kevin, thank you much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

I guess maybe just to kick it off because some folks are familiar. Some people are not that familiar with solid-state lithium batteries in the crowd. We are a little bit more autofocus, which you guys land in. Can you talk about sort of the technology. What makes the batteries unique and really how the business has come to be and is evolving over time.

Great question. And maybe if you pop up PDF Slide 9, while, I get to this. So the battery in folks EVs today and folks cell phones would be what is referred to as a lithium metal -- as a lithium metal -- sorry, a lithium-ion battery, there we go. This is what I'm looking for, there we go. Self-serve. So that would be this architecture on the left. So for those in the room, what -- on the left is this -- is a single layer of a conventional lithium-ion battery. For a throwback to chemistry, you have a battery, you need 2 things. You need anode and cathode, split by a separator. On the top, is the anode that's where you put the lithium ions in a charged state. It's like rolling a ball up a hill, metaphorically speaking. When you want the energy back, lithium-ions go from the anode back down to cathodes like roll the ball back down the hill. That's how a battery works. So what is -- what we and others are working on is this architecture on the right, which is to -- instead of that anode structure, which is a blend of graphite and silicon is to go to pure lithium metal in the charged state. As made, there's nothing there. So what might be the motivation to do that? This structure on the right, we believe, improves every metric that you would want as a customer. First, energy density. We all want our batteries to be smaller and lighter. How do you get there? Well, you just eliminate the anode material as manufactured. So it's smaller and lighter. Power, we want our electric vehicles to charge up quickly. In the structure on the right, if you imagine you're a lithium ion that needs to go from the middle of the cathode to the middle of the anode on charge. If you look at the distance on the conventional structure versus ours, you basically cut the distance in half. And you also solve the -- I'm trying to find an empty space in the structure problem. For those of you who drive electric vehicles, you'd probably notice around, say, like a 40% state of charge, your vehicle starts charging more slowly and more slowly and more slowly and more slowly. The second derivative of your charge is negative. So it kind of -- and then it plateaus it out and gets very slow around 80%. The reason why is that structure, the anode starts to get populated like lithium ions in a hotel room of sorts. So when you're charging, you both need to traverse the distance and then find an empty spot in the structure. Our -- we don't have a hotel that gets full or have that find a room type problem. We just need to go to the other side and plate lithium metal. So what we're trying to do is to cut charge times basically in half. If you were to compare it with a leading electric vehicle -- with the leading electric vehicles on the road today. So that's energy density, that's power. Safety. Safety, we would correlate with the amount of organic material in the cell. The conventional lithium-ion cells are flooded with a liquid electrolyte. And that separator in the middle is also organic material. In our first product, we would get rid of 2 of the 3 organic materials in the cell. The organic material that's flooded the anode, we don't have it and then the separator, our separator is a thin ceramic sheet. Life, 1 of the 2 major sources of life loss occurs in that anode, which we eliminate and then cost. The beauty is energy density, power, life and safety. We're achieving that all by not manufacturing 1 of the 2 electric components. So there's an opportunity for lower cost as well. So it's a pretty -- it's rare that you get all the things that you want by manufacturing something that's simpler and that's the promise of solid-state lithium metal. That package of benefits is not lost on anyone. The original inventors of lithium-ion cells wanted to make this structure work, couldn't use that hosted graphite silicon structure as just a compromise to the cells would work and the industry for the last 30, 40 years, has been trying to make these structures on the right, work for that kind of block of benefits. So that's the motivation. It's a very challenging problem because that thin ceramic layer needs to do a couple of things at the same time. One, it has to be stable to lithium metal, which is one of the most reactive elements on the periodic table, almost nothing is. The second thing is that is a thin solid sheet. We're talking about passing a metal through a solid sheet back and forth, reversibly over automotive life, automotive rates of power. It needs to be thin for energy density. It's about the thickness of a human hair. And it needs to be almost free to manufacture, so -- because it's automotive price point. So -- but for those things, it's straightforward. So it tends to be massive, massive, multi-hundred billion dollar markets in prices like this, big pushes forward, and performance don't come without a significant set of challenges. So that's the opportunity in front of us. And presumably later in the conversation, we'll get into where we are and the work that remains to be done.

Yes. I mean actually, I guess just next, if you could talk about the challenges that you still have in front of you in terms of getting to a commercially viable state, that would be helpful.

Yes. Let me show -- so what we -- just over 3 years ago, we showed to the world for the first time that this chemistry works. We showed automotive cycle life, iterant cycles, automotive rates of power, charge and discharge in an hour with nice thick cathodes and reasonable amounts of temperature and pressure. Those were single layer cells. Three years later, kind of at the end of 2022 after becoming -- actually just 2 years after becoming a public company, we shipped our first A sample. So that started automotive qualification on this new chemistry. So those were 24-layer devices. To become an automotive product, there are 3 stages of qualification, A, B and C. This year, when you go to Slide 27. So this is the product that we're -- the QSE-5. So we shipped 24-layer cells in this kind of XY dimension at the end of '22. That was the A sample. This is the cell form factor for our B sample. So it would be about 5-amp hours, 24 layers. It's in what we refer to as a FlexFrame. That frame has got about a 1 millimeter indent when you charge the cell up, that would use that millimeter. And that's what we call the QSE-5. It's intended to be a leader relative to anything else on the market. So that's the -- what we have on this axis is the -- on the y-axis is a charge time in terms of minutes from 10% to 80% and then on the x-axis is volumetric energy density in terms of watt-hours per liter. We plot some Porsches, Teslas and Rivian, kind of shows the trade-off front here. Our first product, we think, will be better than anything that is on the market at the time and maybe better than what lithium-ion can ever achieve. Remember, we have a big benefit. We eliminate the anode entirely. And that's just the start for us. So we've -- to your question, we've submitted the A samples. To get from A sample to B sample, it needs 4 things. It needs even thicker cathodes that needs that cell packaging, the more efficient packaging, that FlexFrame. And we want to make the separators off of our kind of fast separator process, which we call Raptor and then the subsequent iteration, Cobra. If we do those things together, thicker cathodes in the packaging, films off of Raptor and it works as stated, i.e., reliably, that is our first B samples. And that's the low-volume B samples off of Raptor are targeted this year and then higher volume B samples off of Cobra are targeted next year. So '23, this was -- we did everything we set out to do and '24 we want to start production of those low-volume QSE-5s, ramp the Raptor process, make sure that Cobra equipment is tracking to the longer term time frame and then that sets us up for next year, which is higher volumes of those B samples off the Cobra process. And as a company trying to commercialize a new chemistry into automotive, we're a product company to finish the product and to have our manufacturing mature and ready for the next step, are massive milestones for us. So these next 7 quarters are pretty important for us as a company.

Where are those B samples going?

We have 6 automotive partners that represent -- I think we said we had 3 of the largest by volume in the world, either in units or revenue, I can't remember how we measured it. We have -- that's a mixture of traditional players, pure EV. There's some small luxury performance. So we have a pretty good cross-section of the market as well as geographical and model type mix. VW is our closest partnership by far. They've been investor many times over, they have 2 seats on our board. We have a joint venture together. When we talked about our A0s, our first A sample shipping, VW did a nice press release at the start of the year here that says that, if I was to summarize it, it far exceeded their expectations. Those cells did 1,000 cycles with less than 5% capacity loss over that 1,000 cycles, which they had never seen. No lithium ion cell can do that. So that was a good start. So they're in that mix of 6 OEMs that we mentioned.

I guess one of the things here that people would be focused on is pure EVs, but the potential for fast charging isn't necessarily just the plug issue, it's regen braking, right? And sort of the lack of ability to absorb the energy quickly is a huge problem for batteries, right? So I mean, in some ways, you could actually make out not just on EVs, but on hybrids or EVs with the regen breaking on EVs. I know that sounds kind of a far feel because people are -- folks on the plug going into the car and the discharge. But I mean, what kind of opportunity is there because then that becomes a capture of kinetic energy that is just lost now? I mean what does that bring to the table? I mean with this fast charging that you're...

Our first product is focused on EVs. We're trying to push out that power energy frontier and candidly, our goal is to make EVs so good that you wouldn't even consider a hybrid powertrain. If you think of a hybrid powertrain, you're adding in a motor and a transmission that has a certain amount of fixed cost. The batteries get good enough. Like what's the point? If you have enough range and it charges quickly enough? Our goal is to obviate the need. However, we are a technology platform. The lithium metal anode is, regardless of the automotive application should save volume, weight and deliver superior power. And for high -- for a high-power application like a hybrid, those cells are limited by the same inner problem. So by eliminating the anode you actually make those cells much higher power and then you make the cathodes as thick as you can until you meet the spec and then you give them either a higher energy density version of their power cell or you can even go more power, either direction that the customer would want. So we would -- this technology would be just as applicable there.

But on the regen -- I mean, how much more valuable could it make regen braking. The ability to absorb the electricity. I mean I'm -- this is the main concern but I mean is there an actual net benefit on regen braking?

So there's -- as an EV driver, I know that there are cases where you ask the car to stop more quickly than the car can handle the braking by which it would recapture energy. So at the extreme, you could -- 100% of your vehicle slowdown could be captured as energy. I don't know the percent efficiency gain you would get off of that, but that would be 1 way to size that prize, where 100% of your vehicle slowdown. Your battery is recapturing net of any heat or friction losses.

Okay. Could you just talk about the competitive environment? Are you guys -- is QuantumScape the only company that's doing this? Are there others out there? Where are you from that standpoint?

It's a great question. Unsurprisingly, with this package of benefits that we're targeting, there are a number of players who have been working on this and who are entering all the time to work on this. What we do to help investors cut through that is we plot every -- so this is everyone's data in the world working on a lithium metal anode. We think of the competitive landscape in 2 buckets, kind of a lithium-ion battery or lithium metal. If you have lithium metal, you have the opportunities to improve on power and energy, safety and life and do so with a lower kind of cost of goods sold opportunity as well. So this is everyone's data. There's a lot of different dimensions on this chart at the same time. So trying to put everything nice in one slot. So on the y-axis is how quickly your cell charges. So it's called a C-rate. So it's basically asking how many times can you charge your battery in 1 hour? So a C-rate of 1, 0 to 100% in 1 hour, it's about what a Model 3 would do on a supercharger. We think that's required now. On the x-axis, the cycles, around 800 cycles say your EV does the 300 miles range. That's 240,000 miles, that's plenty. So that's, I think, the requirement for automotive in terms of cycle life. The color is the conditions in which the cells were tested. So red means, in our opinion, a nonautomotive use of temperature or pressure was applied in order to get the cells to function. We don't think that's a product. Blue, we think, is an automotive product. Green, we think, is an automotive or a consumer electronics product. The green, you need 0 applied pressure. And then the final thing is the size of the circle. As manufactured, we have nothing there in the anode. Most other approaches here, you see have small circles because they're adding in excess lithium, pure lithium into the cell. There's no need to do that because the cathode you buy has all the lithium you need. It's also elegant. You don't need to buy it or process it. It hurts your energy density. So there's no need for it. So just have a lithium come in through the cathode. So this is everyone's data. As you can see, everyone is off on multiple dimensions at the same time. We became a public company with a blue circle kind of iterant cycles on that 1 line, and we've only improved since. So we remain the only chemistry that meets what we see as automotive requirements. And we've only gotten it better from there. And meanwhile, we've matured it into A samples. And if we're successful, we're submitting our first B samples. So we don't -- there's room for lots of winners just how big automotive can be. And by the way, we started -- I think you alluded to it in the questions. If you have a battery that is smaller, lighter, faster charging, safer and longer lived, it turns out a lot of applications want that. So that's just 1 market amongst many, but we don't see anyone -- certainly not in automotive requirements, who's -- who appears to have a medium-term path to getting on that line. Many of these other approaches use materials that we believe may not ever reach that line. You can never say never in material science, but we don't see any competitors in the medium term other than us. So we have things to do and those things are -- there's engineering and that's hard. There's scale up afterwards, that's hard. So we actually think of our main competitors as really the leaders in the lithium-ion space, which are CATL, LG, Panasonic, for example.

Based on the work you've done internally, what do you think the technology that you guys are bringing to the market or aim to bring to the market ultimately means for range, means for like the battery size, means for the weight of the vehicle?

That's a good question. So we bring like a better building block of sorts to the OEM. So if you take our -- so what we plotted here -- the kind of cell energy density and power. If you take those, Teslas might be 700 watt-hours per liter charging in, call it, almost 30 minutes, 10% to 80%. If you bring them something closer to 800 watt-hours per liter in 15 minutes, you get the benefit of 700 to 800, which is another 15%. There's actually a packaging efficiency because they're using cylindrical cells, we're using prismatic. So you get that percentage increase in range if the OEM chooses to populate the rest of their pack with cells. What they could say is just give me the same range and I'll use less volume and weight -- and you'd rather -- so that's really the choice of the OEMs. We give them unique combinations of either pack size or range or power that they would have. But choose a simple example if you take the percent increase in range plus a little bit of packaging efficiency, you might get 20% to 25% more range, for example, and then cut the charge time in half. And then you'd have the life and the safety benefits on top of that. And what's kind of neat is the battery effectively determines all the performance of the car that you care about, range, charge time, power, life, safety, and it's their biggest bomb item, too. You just don't run into substantial differences between leading automotive manufacturers kind of in the same kind of class of vehicles. I'm oversimplifying this and would anger some people by saying that like BMW, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes all make like fairly beautiful, well-engineered products and their engines may have little differences, but they're not many tens of percent different on multiple dimensions at the same time. So this is a very substantial advantage to -- that we're trying to give our partners.

And do you have a sense at this point? I mean, you're still very much in kind of the early stages having yet gotten to full volume production. But do you have a sense as to where cost per unit is going to fall out. So like where you'll be able to price it relative to competing products on the market right now?

I would split between cost and price. So what we talked about is in an at-scale factory, let me go back to the architecture slide. So our target is to make our separator -- sorry, Slide 9 for less than the cost of the anode plus separator of the conventional lithium-ion cells. We believe we can do that in a like-for-like scale factory. And we think a kind of scale factory is in the tens of gigawatt hours these days. So that's on the cost of goods sold. What the price is? We'll let the market determine that based on the size of the performance advantage that we provide our OEMs. And that's one of the reasons why we have a block of 6 OEMs that we work with is to get fairness there for whatever value we're delivering, we'd hope to get a fair slice of that.

And so you mentioned [indiscernible] like the tens of gigawatt hours. But I think more publicly, you've kind of come out and said, you expect half gigawatt hour facility. I don't know if maybe that was just kind of like an initial get-go, but where do you stand in terms of getting the facility ready for production? Have you acquired equipment? What sort of time line are we talking about here.

Great question. Our plan for commercialization is the QSE-5 and it's out of the buildings in San Jose that we already have. We've talked about that and we're already working with the launch customer for that QSE-5 product. So we've talked about those volumes being small because they're out of those San Jose facilities, but it is a product we think it's high visibility, and we assume it would lead to other wins. After that, to get into the gigawatt hour type scale, that would likely be a separate facility and then you'd start to -- then you get into the scale up type plans with Volkswagen.

Okay. And have you yet put any CapEx towards that at this point? Or where is...

So no CapEx for that. We're commercializing first out of San Jose, which is the buildings we have, land and equipment for that. So this is where the Cobra equipment, for example, would support that launch customer. The CapEx and site selection aren't gating for the subsequent stages. Like the critical path kind of goes through San Jose.

So just following it, to scale up, I mean, once you've proven commercial viability at a smaller scale, what you're saying is stepping forward to 10 gigawatt or potentially much larger is on a relative basis to what you've achieved at that point fairly easy. And it's a question of dollars and capital from a partner or the capital markets or whatever and other investors. And then at that point, it's literally just rock and roll, build the factory and you should be able to go.

So it sounds easy on paper.

That's not easy, I mean, I don't believe it's going to be easy, but it's not. It's relative to what you've achieved at that point...

Correct. It's a different risk profile. So the final B sample product is done. So there's not a development risk. We would have been operating our processes off of production intent processes, so it would be equipment at smaller scale. So when you step up into -- and you should think of a stepping stone between the first facility and the kind of at scale factory. There's probably one step between. You are running your process off of tools where, while you are familiar with that process, you haven't done that process at scale. So there is development that needs to happen. And then there's just all of the execution. If you think of all the different tools in the factory as their own little kind of S curves. You try to hold everything on the same time line, do whatever you can early, but inevitably, something is late or gets bungled up and that kind of jams, yes. That's the manufacturing hell that Elon describes. We have the joy of going through that ourselves. But it's a different type of risk where it's more scale up, parallelization, manufacturing execution type risk. And it's not on the materials or the cell development at that point. And one thing I would like to talk about is in our last shareholder letter, we talked a lot about this transition from a prototype to a product. We promoted Dr. Siva Sivaram to the CEO chair precisely for that transition. So Jagdeep, our founder has been with us for 12-plus years -- actually 12-plus years, continues as Chairman. To his credit, he has self-awareness that this next stage of exactly that type of execution for introduction of a technology and then scale up to very, very high volumes is something that he hasn't done many, many, many times in his career and sought and I think we found a terrific leader in Dr. Siva Sivaram to do that. Siva came most recently as the President of Western Digital, has background in semiconductor before that where he's literally taken many, many times, sophisticated technology, broadened the market and scale it up to high volumes. Like Western Digital is shipping millions of units, tens of billions of dollars a year. I think the leader in data storage, physical data storage. So I think Siva is a great leader for that -- kind of next part of the journey to help best address those challenges and risks that I laid out.

Maybe just 1 question, follow-up and I'll pass it back to [ Jon ]. I mean, somebody like that, sounds like they had a pretty good job. Right? And to convince them to leave that job and come to join you guys, it sounds like a great story. So I'm not -- but it is not without risk versus where he sits, I mean, which relatively low -- where he sat was relatively low risk. What was the recruitment and because you're the CFO and you're minding all the shareholder capital, package that was -- had to be laid out to get him to come in.

So we disclosed it in, I think, July or September what the package was on the -- because his initial role in which operations and technology reported through. It hasn't yet been disclosed, the CEO package, but it would be competitive with what CEOs earn at kind of our scale of company, but I think the other part of your question is why join? So there's a kind of a head and heart reason, both are important. As I mentioned, batteries, a significantly better battery can be a multi-hundred billion dollar opportunity in automotive alone, let alone the other spaces. And this advantage that we have on energy density, power, safety, life while making it kind of lower cost of goods sold at an equivalent scale. It's like -- it's really -- it's a pretty amazing combination of pieces, and we think of the competitive advantage as being quite durable in the space. So that combination of massive market size with significant technology differentiation and as I mentioned before, this is just the start of our road map. We want to make the cells bigger. We want to talk about the cathode. We want to do other cathode materials. So it's a pretty compelling thing from just a business point of view. From the heart side, the world also needs this. Significantly better batteries, there was just an article in the New York Times, which was referencing that the largest like single source of emissions when you add up is transportation when you add up all different sources. So the opportunity to both do well as a business and to give the world something that it needs for sustainability, both together, I think, he sees this as like a legacy gift to the world is to pull this off.

Are there any questions from the audience before we keep going? If not, Okay. Go ahead.

[indiscernible] Cobra, in terms of the learnings and the curve you were talking about, just how much overlap is there between the 2 technologies? Or is it another set of new...

No. Great question. When setting out to do difficult things that haven't been done. One principle is to try to break it up into as smaller pieces as possible, and you get quick feedback and you can make little adjustments and you get encouragement that you're on the right path. It's exactly what we did with the separator technology. One other quick kind of non sequitur. I'll -- this will make sense if you give me a second. So when we started the company, people didn't even think that the material would exist that would do this. Then they said, well, if you make it thin, it won't work. And they said, well, certainly you can't make it thin and continuous and have it still work. Then they said it will always apply -- it will always require pressure, it will always require excess lithium. So we've done 5 things people thought were impossible. This is sixth, the speed with which we want to process this material at automotive scale and throughput is probably the sixth impossible thing. So now to your question. So what we want is a tool and to pass as much material through it as possible. That's how you get the scale and the economics. Raptor and Cobra share the same process. It's a fast separator process. We took a more conventional tool and modified it to get to the point of Raptor. Cobra, we do need to change elements of the tool to fully utilize the process. And so we have a -- there were kind of 3 bites at the apple. We have prototypes of Cobra, which we said we're already working. We now have Raptor, which is landed and qualified. And if we're successful, it will be ramped and we will be making our first B samples this year. Then you have Cobra after it. We gave an interim milestone we need to land key equipment for it. So it's the same process generally. The major difference is the tool, and you can see the productivity on the right relative to our current generation, which is going to be at 100%. The Cobra lines both for the time it takes for heat treatment passing through the tool as well as the ratio of output per unit footprint of the tool, you've kind of -- that line is almost 0. So you should think of those as 2 orders of magnitude faster than what we do today. So it's very significant. And if you think about it as a -- the separator is our major component. In most ceramic processing, the heat treatment step is the key step that is the most expensive, it determines quality. So we thought we'd focus on that for investors. That's right. And that's why we're so excited about this process and then the Raptor and the Cobra steps.

And out of curiosity, I mean back when you were -- when Volkswagen was testing, was it the A samples. What was the feedback that they got? I mean -- and also could you talk about the extent to which they did testing on this battery?

So let me go back to that slide on the data, there it is. So we submitted these at the end of '22, they did a battery of -- well, not a good word. They did a range of tests on them that included things like ASR, charge rates, et cetera, I would have to go back to our own filing to where we would have listed the test. But the most important one is this kind of life test where every cycle is meant to approximate a drive where they want 800-plus cycles while maintaining 80% or more capacity or tension where every cycle feels like a drive. And this test takes many, many months to do. And the requirement was to exceed 80% through 800 cycles. We had hit 1,000 while only losing 5%. So that was a -- they were impressed to the upside on this result. So I think this was quite impressive to them. I think the language from that press release talked about, this has been, they think the future of energy storage and that they're working with us as -- and as supportive and as quick of a way as possible to bring this into series production.

Got it. And now also, I mean, you have provided some guidance for '24. Talked about adjusted EBITDA loss of $250 million to $300 million. Could you talk about what it's going to take to ultimately get to earnings and cash flow breakeven? Any detail you can provide on that?

We talked about cash flow breakeven in that scale facility. So think of a plant in the kind of tens of gigawatt hours for cash flow breakeven. And for '24, we laid out the 4 things we need to do. The Alpha-2 is an interim milestone on the way to those first kind of low-volume QSE-5 shipments. On the process side, ramp Raptor, get the key equipment in for Cobra. Next year is high volumes of those samples as well as -- which are then utilizing the films off of Cobra. We mentioned we're already working with a launch customer on that product, you'd see commercialization after this. First, at small scale through QS-0 and then after working with Volkswagen.

Okay. And also if you could just kind of go through the capital structure, what's the capital needs you might have going forward?

Asked me my favorite question as a CFO. So we ended -- we ended last year with $1.7 billion of liquidity. So that is 0 debt. So that is squeaky clean. And that funds this entire road map and then into the second half of '26. And that excludes any use of at-the-market facility, which we put in place over a year ago through the 31st of December, we still have not used.

Okay. I guess as you've had conversations with investors, I mean what's -- what are kind of the headwinds to getting more investors involved. What are -- what are going to be the trigger points that are maybe going to make it happen.

Yes. It's a good question. As time has passed, the bulk of the questions were, like, can you multilayer it? Can you maintain performance as you get -- as you mature the product. We still do get questions on what are the gaps to the product. What are the [indiscernible] iteration. Increasingly, we're getting questions now on the next stage, which is the Raptor, Cobra type questions and how that -- what are the risks and steps to commercialization. Those would probably be the 2 main questions, and then there's a lot of excitement to learn more about the launch customer as well. So those are probably the 3 classic questions. I'd say most are probably on the Raptor, Cobra type class question.

Just real quickly, I mean, Toyota is also working on some stuff internally. And they're pretty good in some of this stuff, right? I mean, over time, they've proven in many ways to be pretty competent. Where do they stand in the competitive landscape? And what do you think of them?

They're not on the chart. It's very interesting. So they talk about a solid-state ion conductor. They use a sulfide. Their plan, at least all the data they have shared publicly is to use that as their ion conductor with a conventional cathode and anode. So what's the benefit of leaving the anode and cathode the same and just replacing the ion conductor, is probably safety. So they appear to be undertaking that work purely for the safety benefit. We think that's a great validation of how important safety benefit is by itself. But that is a small appetizer to the plate of benefits we're bringing in terms of the power, the energy density, the life as well as the opportunity to make it at lower cost. So it's -- sulfides have had a -- no one has shown the types of performance we have had on the sulfide class. Samsung in 2020, also working on sulfides. They interestingly kicked off apparel effort way back over on the left in ceramics. I don't know if that means that they've given up on the approach. The other players, Solid Power had historically been a sulfide player with lithium metal. Similarly said, "Hey, we'll use it." So there's not a -- flag bearers using sulfides with lithium metal seem to have lost some steam running up the hill or have maybe left the hill for at least a product generation or two. So that's -- I would say that Toyota falls in that camp. Fantastically capable company and a lot of respect for that battery research group, perhaps are one of the most well-respected battery research groups on the planet. It's just that they've chosen a material system that hasn't put up the numbers.

Out of curiosity, I mean, at least like using lithium metal, I mean, it would seem like at least just from a common sense standpoint, not that I really know my chemistry, but it would seem like it runs hot relative to other batteries out there. Is that true or not? What is the sort of fire risk that we've read about and occasionally hear about batteries light on fire and then it takes a while to kind of put that fire down. So how is the safety of this battery relative to others? Because that's obviously foremost of most car buyers concerns, I would think.

Yes. So in terms of heat evolution, it'd be similar to between ours and conventional lithium-ion cells, you might lose 2% to 3% of your potential energy as heat loss in any given direction. So it wouldn't necessarily be any hotter or cooler. Actually, counterintuitively, we have a better job removing heat from the cell when you plate lithium metal, that's a fantastic super highway to get heat out. It almost acts like a current collector to get heat out. Like the copper and aluminum foils in a cell is where a lot of the heat leaves. If you plate lithium metal, that's another metal sheet. So actually, we think we have superior heat removal properties and actually, which makes the thermal design easier. In terms of the fire risk, you need 3 things. You need organic material, you need a heat source and you need oxygen, oxygen is in the cathode. The organic materials is the heat source. So it's a short of the cell. So we think we're at least as good, if not better, is the ambition because we're removing 2/3 of the organic material from the cell. We have some encouraging preliminary results, and we need to show that the proof is in the pudding as we make the cells more mature. But our goal is to be improved on safety.

All right. Thank you. I think with that, we're out of time. I can't believe that you're also a CFO on top of knowing all that technical details, so we appreciate that. I assume you probably know the accounting because it's far simpler.

It is far simpler. I look forward to focusing purely on the revenue in a future call. Also, thank you everybody prelunch to talk about solid-state chemistry. That's very nice.

Thank you so much, Kevin.

Thank you.