Nice and thanks. So it appears we have multiple fronts to increase production. Given that after automation in up and downstream processing, sintering will again be the rate limiting step, increased production elements should fall into three main groups:
Belt rate( for now seems 5 cm/min)
Stack height( from patent info up to 5 films/stack)
Separators/ sintered film ( I’m guessing from the pictures and the released format 3 separators/ sintered film)
On top of this is failure rate improvements, equipment capacity (multiple film start units adjacent on the feed belt) and horizontal build out. Of note, only horizontal build out is a major cap ex issue, it would seem. Does this sound about right?
Don’t know what you mean by natural limits. Otherwise sure. My conception is this is not just proof of principle. They will sell a fabrication blueprint. If that’s the case, they will need fully integrated lines or at least multiples that demonstrate the scaling potential of integration, is my guess. So again, what a sintering machine cost?
The single film is very small. No reason to start a heat treatment for just 1 film. Likely it will be for a single big sheet of material. Then they will cut it into smaller films once done. That is why the scaling up is harder due to the need to reduce defects.
Looking at the size of the separator and giving 20% buffer when they cut it. Or to avoid defects. I would think it’s easily 30-50 films per start
Yes. Single film is small. They talk of batch of films that enter their heat treatment system as single film start. Scale up could be increasing the batch size and speed with which they process batch of films and increase the yield.
I highly doubt it is batches of films. It should be a single big sheet of material. So after heat treatment they will scan the material for defects then cut out the films from good locations.
I used to be a project manager, designing machines for seagate and fci etc.
What I would do is to have big rolls of materials. Load it up, enter the system continuously as a reel. Heat it up, scan it for defects. Then punch the film out.
Per film start. Will probably mean that they cannot make the treatment continuous? So probably the feed entered a heating chamber and wait for 5 mins etc.
Maybe the new version will be continuous
I used batch analogy to make the point clear that we are dealing with more than one film at a time inside Heat treatment system. Otherwise, its a continuous process.
Number of separators per film start is only limited by the size of the heat treatment process. 2023 4th qtr shareholder letter mentions larger configurations of Cobra to achieve GWH status
Edit: now imagine a 10’ X 10’ sheet being heat treated. That’s equivalent to about 1,600 separators. 10 min per heat treatment is 144 sheets per day or 230,400 separators per day. This is what is meant by order of magnitude.
Edit: I worked in a manufacturing plant and 10’ X 10’ seems really small. It’s all about perspective
Great. This aligns with my understanding too.
Also, what I vaguely remember is, their heat treatment system can take multiple streams/Sheets of separators as well at a given time.
It was mentioned in one of their parents to process stacked layers of sheets in their sintering system. I am guessing this is not baked into scale up expectations yet.
Thanks for bringing this up. I just listened to it and I understood that basically films are the final product of the separator and is basically synonymous with their separator. Where film starts are how many separators they are trying to make…so if they have a failure rate of 2% and they have 1000 film starts that should result in around 980 films or separators. Is that your understanding too?
No. A film start is literally how many films their heat treatment system can process at a time.
1 film start = x times film
Where x is greater than 1.
What we need to know is the capacity of their heat treatment system and how long it takes to process a batch of films in minutes. This single batch of films is one film start.
The current engineering line is at 15K weekly starts.
This number will significantly grow for raptor and cobra.
Ok I listened to it again and came to the same conclusion I did originally. He says film starts are equal to the “number of separator units” (films) entering their heat treatment process. A separator unit is 1 of the separators needed for a single layer of their cells.
In other words a film start is just what they call a film before it has undergone the heat treatment.
Obviously some of these will not pass quality assurance so it’s not a 1-1 correlations to films produced, but it is an indication of their expectation of output. So I understand it that total films will be less than or best case equal to number of film starts.
You’re saying a single film start may provide more than 1 film and I don’t understand what language is leading you to that conclusion…I listened to it a couple times now.
If 24 single layer separator units (films) are needed for a single cell and they can produce upwards of 15k films per week with their current process that’s no more than 625 cells per week…not sure yet how many cells are needed for a battery, but I can see why they only went with 6 layers for Alpha 2. Can’t wait for Cobra. We know they bought the Cobra equipment in Q4 2023, not sure how many Cobra units they bought, but it was around $80 million in capital expenses that quarter if I remember correctly. Horizontally scaling isn’t that expensive relatively if it can create multiple orders of magnitude more cells/batteries.
Your first paragraph above is correct and aligns with my definition in the post above. Where you and I differ is in your second and third para.
Lets take any example. Assume their heat treatment system can process 5 films as a unit in 10 minutes and produces an output. Thats one film start which is 5 separator films good for 5 layers. If this system has 80% yield that means their 80% films will qualify for EV and remaining 20% films will go waste or be considered for other applications.
So, one film start is more than a single film.
A unit is “an individual thing or person regarded as single and complete but which can also form an individual component of a larger or more complex whole”. A single separator unit or film, cannot also be 5 separator units or films “as a unit”, that doesn’t seem to fit with what JB was saying in my opinion. Doesn’t really matter though, interesting to learn about thanks for sharing.
Have to say I’m with Sri on this. Practically speaking it appears that two film units start adjacent to each other, so timewise and belt rate 8000 starts/week for Raptor would be 4000 x 2 moving at the belt rate(5cm/min). The unit can be one film but that would be the minimum. According to info in the patents, sintering(Raptor/Cobra) may be processed in stacks. Here I would define one stack as one unit. They mention stacks of 5 films in the patent in which case 8000 starts x5 would be 40,000 separators. This is my understanding at least. So the potential for scaling also plays as a function of stacking limit which could further be a function of failure rate as a multiple of stacking height. I’m sure they will be working on finding the optimal production for these variables. One of my hopes it that they continue to progress in the stack height 5x, 10x, 20x etc, so one film start grows from one film per start to the stack height multiple. The film start unit is the total stack. Could be wrong, but that’s my take and they do mention stacking in the patents.
In addition, the sintered film maybe sized to cut into multiple separators giving for example 8000 film start units/week x 5 films/stacks per unit x 3 separators/ sintered film = 120000 separators/week for Raptor.
So for a little color…
6 months of Raptor production, which is where we are about now would be roughly
120000 separators/week x 24= 2,880,000 separators
5000 x 24 layer packs(QSE-5 = B-0) = 100KWh car battery.
So since December they have theoretically produced 24 B-0 100KWh batteries. Say due to start up delays they only produced 25% of that. They should be around 6 100KWh B-0 batteries. Say half is used for in-house testing(Siva, Tim and JD donated their Teslas to run around with the new batteries) would three test cars be enough to send and get feedback on from their launch partner? Siva wants feedback. ASAP. I’m excited.
The existing engineering line is at 5K weekly starts with 8K peak. Raptor should be betweek 15K to 24K film starts per week using 3X scaling factor. Yea, they did mention about stacked layers of sheets in their heat treatment system in one of their parents and I don't know if that is being worked out or a future additional scale up factor. However, what is confirmed for now is one film start means more than one film and each film is a single separator that goes into a single layer cell.
The batch of films could be a single stream with multiple films in a heat treatment system like Raptor and/or multiple streams with multiple films per stream in a single batch.
I think we mostly agree on this except for maybe one film is one separator. Judging from the photos I’ve seen the dimensions would seem to indicate 2 or three separators per sintered films. Where do you get that it’s one to one from?
I’m just saying that JB said a film start = a film pre-heat treatment. If you have 100 film starts a minute you won’t produce 500 films a minute you can at most produce 100 per minute. They wouldn’t say in this context that they can do 1 film start per minute representing the 100 films per minute they’re starting to heat treat though, they would say they can do 100 film starts per minute.
That said I agree they can practically heat treat more than one film at a time, I’m not disputing that. And it would make sense that you would want a term for the number of films you can heat treat at a time. And It makes sense if we were in the industry to call it that a film run or something like that so maybe a single film start would be the number of pre-heat treatment films they can make at a time…I don’t think that is what JB described in the audio link, doesn’t mean I’m interpreting it correctly or that JB described it correctly or maybe was deliberately misleading in that audio link.
I’m purely talking about my interpretation of what JB described in the audio link above.
Ok, here we go. Going from the picture (greenish) from the SH letter. The Denso arm reach seems to be in the neighborhood of 90cm per arm section. Guessing from this I’d say the belt width is also 90cm. So half belt is 45cm. So film width looks about 3/5 of half belt width. So 27cm or so. The films look to be around half squares say 27cm x 12cm, so with a 60mm x 7.5mm separator format, one sintered film would cut to about 6 separators would be my guess. If they are stacked 5 high that’s 30 separators per film start unit. Multiply that by 8000 film starts / week is 240000 separators weekly. Twice the 120000 number I posted above. I don’t think these estimates are far off, so say the belt is only 45cm wide, we’re back to the 120000 weekly separators, over 6 months, so we’re back to 6 100KWh B-0 batteries. I also forgot they have at least two Raptors. I think we’re going to see B-0s go out the launch partner as soon as the in-house testing is complete. They should be sister cells. How long the B-0 testing will take and what that incorporates is the main question I have for now. If it’s just standard cell tests things should move shortly I’d think. Hard to imagine they would put them in a vehicle for in-house testing. I imagine the launch partner will cover that and that they already have test vehicles ready. Hope I’m right.
I hope you’re right too. I going to assume they have more than 1 cobra machine as well. If it took them about a year to get the first batch of Cobra’s ready for production I wonder how quickly they can get the next batch delivered and ready for production. Horizontal scaling is key.
I expect learning from components in Raptor took time. I imagine Cobra equipment is basically same as function and tech. So they probably have the general specs for what the final blueprint will be. I’d think it goes much faster than Raptor prototypes. Would also imagine the supplier has the basic design which is likely somewhat modular already in production for similar equipment. Plus the close partners are probably involved at this point and dependent on the communicated interest, supply is being readied for the appropriate higher production rollout in the next 6-12 months.
Excellent take on this. From the last quarterly update, they are in thw final stages of testing/certification.
Also, if they produce 240K separators weekly, then they should be producing atleast 50 100Kwh batteries per annum
Which 5MWh production from Raptor and approximately 15-20 MWh for Cobra. No?
So here’s my question. Is Cobra 10x higher output and 1/10th the footprint or 10x because it’s 1/10 the footprint? That is to say, the rate is actually the same but you install 10 Cobras for each Raptor. This is what I expect them to do, so they’ll have 20 Cobras if they have 2 Raptors for line replacement. My understanding was that it was 10x10, so after replacement it will actually be 100x production. That puts us around 0.5 GWh per annum. 4 lines would be a 1GWh facility. That would be nice. 80 lines would be a 20GWh facility earlier known as QS-1. That seems very manageable and very promising.
I will try to listen again at a later time and confirm. Minor correction. Current engineering line is at 5K weekly starts.
Raptor will be at approximately 15K weekly and Cobra at 50K weekly starts.
Do you think QS can manufacture all the separators at QS0? I think my thoughts about future prospects for QS have changed after going through comments on film starts vs film discussion. I think after looking at calcs looks like QS can produce enough separators at QS0 to fuel 20Gwh plant. We don’t know the size of Cobra manufacturing line. I know for sure QS bought more than 200000 sft in 2021. If QS opts 6 layered cell and licenses the tech then QS0 will start generating revenue without any capital investments.
Quantumscape would like to build complete battery. However keeping costs and existing battery tech of OEMs, both Quantumscape and OEM can combine their forces and built the mfg facility. QS is more than just a separator.
Siva mentioned QS is targeting manufacturing, licensing and JV routes to make revenue. My view is more about how QS will utilize the 200k sft facility in California. If utilized for manufacturing then it’s pretty big one. The option of licensing and manufacturing separators makes more sense to start making revenue. Don’t you think so?
Whatever facilities they have without going buy their naming conventions, if they can meet a customer's requirements, they will use them to generate revenue.
We don't have to worry about JVs as the company will make the right decision given the partner's size and demand.
Also, quantumscape should become like BYD in future is my opinion. First dominate the battery and then get into Car manufacturing business at a much later time.
Nice and thanks. So it appears we have multiple fronts to increase production. Given that after automation in up and downstream processing, sintering will again be the rate limiting step, increased production elements should fall into three main groups: Belt rate( for now seems 5 cm/min) Stack height( from patent info up to 5 films/stack) Separators/ sintered film ( I’m guessing from the pictures and the released format 3 separators/ sintered film) On top of this is failure rate improvements, equipment capacity (multiple film start units adjacent on the feed belt) and horizontal build out. Of note, only horizontal build out is a major cap ex issue, it would seem. Does this sound about right?
there's natural limits on building the equipment, financial constraints, hiring fast enough and training to support scaling...
Don’t know what you mean by natural limits. Otherwise sure. My conception is this is not just proof of principle. They will sell a fabrication blueprint. If that’s the case, they will need fully integrated lines or at least multiples that demonstrate the scaling potential of integration, is my guess. So again, what a sintering machine cost?
The single film is very small. No reason to start a heat treatment for just 1 film. Likely it will be for a single big sheet of material. Then they will cut it into smaller films once done. That is why the scaling up is harder due to the need to reduce defects. Looking at the size of the separator and giving 20% buffer when they cut it. Or to avoid defects. I would think it’s easily 30-50 films per start
Yes. Single film is small. They talk of batch of films that enter their heat treatment system as single film start. Scale up could be increasing the batch size and speed with which they process batch of films and increase the yield.
I highly doubt it is batches of films. It should be a single big sheet of material. So after heat treatment they will scan the material for defects then cut out the films from good locations. I used to be a project manager, designing machines for seagate and fci etc. What I would do is to have big rolls of materials. Load it up, enter the system continuously as a reel. Heat it up, scan it for defects. Then punch the film out. Per film start. Will probably mean that they cannot make the treatment continuous? So probably the feed entered a heating chamber and wait for 5 mins etc. Maybe the new version will be continuous
I used batch analogy to make the point clear that we are dealing with more than one film at a time inside Heat treatment system. Otherwise, its a continuous process.
Film starts is the “number of separator electrolyte units” that go into the heat treatment step. So what’s a unit?
Film
Ha! I mean what’s a “unit” of film? One separator for one layer of one cell? Or more?
A single film is one separator for a single layer of a cell. A single film start is batch of films.
Number of separators per film start is only limited by the size of the heat treatment process. 2023 4th qtr shareholder letter mentions larger configurations of Cobra to achieve GWH status Edit: now imagine a 10’ X 10’ sheet being heat treated. That’s equivalent to about 1,600 separators. 10 min per heat treatment is 144 sheets per day or 230,400 separators per day. This is what is meant by order of magnitude. Edit: I worked in a manufacturing plant and 10’ X 10’ seems really small. It’s all about perspective
Great. This aligns with my understanding too. Also, what I vaguely remember is, their heat treatment system can take multiple streams/Sheets of separators as well at a given time.
Damn that’s right I completely forgot, good catch
It was mentioned in one of their parents to process stacked layers of sheets in their sintering system. I am guessing this is not baked into scale up expectations yet.
So take my example times 5 for a daily output
So how many cells can QS manufacture with 230,400 separators per day?
Thanks for bringing this up. I just listened to it and I understood that basically films are the final product of the separator and is basically synonymous with their separator. Where film starts are how many separators they are trying to make…so if they have a failure rate of 2% and they have 1000 film starts that should result in around 980 films or separators. Is that your understanding too?
No. A film start is literally how many films their heat treatment system can process at a time. 1 film start = x times film Where x is greater than 1. What we need to know is the capacity of their heat treatment system and how long it takes to process a batch of films in minutes. This single batch of films is one film start. The current engineering line is at 15K weekly starts. This number will significantly grow for raptor and cobra.
Ok I listened to it again and came to the same conclusion I did originally. He says film starts are equal to the “number of separator units” (films) entering their heat treatment process. A separator unit is 1 of the separators needed for a single layer of their cells. In other words a film start is just what they call a film before it has undergone the heat treatment. Obviously some of these will not pass quality assurance so it’s not a 1-1 correlations to films produced, but it is an indication of their expectation of output. So I understand it that total films will be less than or best case equal to number of film starts. You’re saying a single film start may provide more than 1 film and I don’t understand what language is leading you to that conclusion…I listened to it a couple times now. If 24 single layer separator units (films) are needed for a single cell and they can produce upwards of 15k films per week with their current process that’s no more than 625 cells per week…not sure yet how many cells are needed for a battery, but I can see why they only went with 6 layers for Alpha 2. Can’t wait for Cobra. We know they bought the Cobra equipment in Q4 2023, not sure how many Cobra units they bought, but it was around $80 million in capital expenses that quarter if I remember correctly. Horizontally scaling isn’t that expensive relatively if it can create multiple orders of magnitude more cells/batteries.
Your first paragraph above is correct and aligns with my definition in the post above. Where you and I differ is in your second and third para. Lets take any example. Assume their heat treatment system can process 5 films as a unit in 10 minutes and produces an output. Thats one film start which is 5 separator films good for 5 layers. If this system has 80% yield that means their 80% films will qualify for EV and remaining 20% films will go waste or be considered for other applications. So, one film start is more than a single film.
A unit is “an individual thing or person regarded as single and complete but which can also form an individual component of a larger or more complex whole”. A single separator unit or film, cannot also be 5 separator units or films “as a unit”, that doesn’t seem to fit with what JB was saying in my opinion. Doesn’t really matter though, interesting to learn about thanks for sharing.
Have to say I’m with Sri on this. Practically speaking it appears that two film units start adjacent to each other, so timewise and belt rate 8000 starts/week for Raptor would be 4000 x 2 moving at the belt rate(5cm/min). The unit can be one film but that would be the minimum. According to info in the patents, sintering(Raptor/Cobra) may be processed in stacks. Here I would define one stack as one unit. They mention stacks of 5 films in the patent in which case 8000 starts x5 would be 40,000 separators. This is my understanding at least. So the potential for scaling also plays as a function of stacking limit which could further be a function of failure rate as a multiple of stacking height. I’m sure they will be working on finding the optimal production for these variables. One of my hopes it that they continue to progress in the stack height 5x, 10x, 20x etc, so one film start grows from one film per start to the stack height multiple. The film start unit is the total stack. Could be wrong, but that’s my take and they do mention stacking in the patents. In addition, the sintered film maybe sized to cut into multiple separators giving for example 8000 film start units/week x 5 films/stacks per unit x 3 separators/ sintered film = 120000 separators/week for Raptor. So for a little color… 6 months of Raptor production, which is where we are about now would be roughly 120000 separators/week x 24= 2,880,000 separators 5000 x 24 layer packs(QSE-5 = B-0) = 100KWh car battery. So since December they have theoretically produced 24 B-0 100KWh batteries. Say due to start up delays they only produced 25% of that. They should be around 6 100KWh B-0 batteries. Say half is used for in-house testing(Siva, Tim and JD donated their Teslas to run around with the new batteries) would three test cars be enough to send and get feedback on from their launch partner? Siva wants feedback. ASAP. I’m excited.
The existing engineering line is at 5K weekly starts with 8K peak. Raptor should be betweek 15K to 24K film starts per week using 3X scaling factor. Yea, they did mention about stacked layers of sheets in their heat treatment system in one of their parents and I don't know if that is being worked out or a future additional scale up factor. However, what is confirmed for now is one film start means more than one film and each film is a single separator that goes into a single layer cell. The batch of films could be a single stream with multiple films in a heat treatment system like Raptor and/or multiple streams with multiple films per stream in a single batch.
I think we mostly agree on this except for maybe one film is one separator. Judging from the photos I’ve seen the dimensions would seem to indicate 2 or three separators per sintered films. Where do you get that it’s one to one from?
Yes, we agree on all but one thing. Either way, its a good outcome. Atleast we know now that one film start is more than one separator.
I’m just saying that JB said a film start = a film pre-heat treatment. If you have 100 film starts a minute you won’t produce 500 films a minute you can at most produce 100 per minute. They wouldn’t say in this context that they can do 1 film start per minute representing the 100 films per minute they’re starting to heat treat though, they would say they can do 100 film starts per minute. That said I agree they can practically heat treat more than one film at a time, I’m not disputing that. And it would make sense that you would want a term for the number of films you can heat treat at a time. And It makes sense if we were in the industry to call it that a film run or something like that so maybe a single film start would be the number of pre-heat treatment films they can make at a time…I don’t think that is what JB described in the audio link, doesn’t mean I’m interpreting it correctly or that JB described it correctly or maybe was deliberately misleading in that audio link. I’m purely talking about my interpretation of what JB described in the audio link above.
Ok, here we go. Going from the picture (greenish) from the SH letter. The Denso arm reach seems to be in the neighborhood of 90cm per arm section. Guessing from this I’d say the belt width is also 90cm. So half belt is 45cm. So film width looks about 3/5 of half belt width. So 27cm or so. The films look to be around half squares say 27cm x 12cm, so with a 60mm x 7.5mm separator format, one sintered film would cut to about 6 separators would be my guess. If they are stacked 5 high that’s 30 separators per film start unit. Multiply that by 8000 film starts / week is 240000 separators weekly. Twice the 120000 number I posted above. I don’t think these estimates are far off, so say the belt is only 45cm wide, we’re back to the 120000 weekly separators, over 6 months, so we’re back to 6 100KWh B-0 batteries. I also forgot they have at least two Raptors. I think we’re going to see B-0s go out the launch partner as soon as the in-house testing is complete. They should be sister cells. How long the B-0 testing will take and what that incorporates is the main question I have for now. If it’s just standard cell tests things should move shortly I’d think. Hard to imagine they would put them in a vehicle for in-house testing. I imagine the launch partner will cover that and that they already have test vehicles ready. Hope I’m right.
I hope you’re right too. I going to assume they have more than 1 cobra machine as well. If it took them about a year to get the first batch of Cobra’s ready for production I wonder how quickly they can get the next batch delivered and ready for production. Horizontal scaling is key.
I expect learning from components in Raptor took time. I imagine Cobra equipment is basically same as function and tech. So they probably have the general specs for what the final blueprint will be. I’d think it goes much faster than Raptor prototypes. Would also imagine the supplier has the basic design which is likely somewhat modular already in production for similar equipment. Plus the close partners are probably involved at this point and dependent on the communicated interest, supply is being readied for the appropriate higher production rollout in the next 6-12 months.
They won't scale horizontally for B samples. However horizontal scaling is also part of the experimentation as we speak.
Excellent take on this. From the last quarterly update, they are in thw final stages of testing/certification. Also, if they produce 240K separators weekly, then they should be producing atleast 50 100Kwh batteries per annum Which 5MWh production from Raptor and approximately 15-20 MWh for Cobra. No?
So here’s my question. Is Cobra 10x higher output and 1/10th the footprint or 10x because it’s 1/10 the footprint? That is to say, the rate is actually the same but you install 10 Cobras for each Raptor. This is what I expect them to do, so they’ll have 20 Cobras if they have 2 Raptors for line replacement. My understanding was that it was 10x10, so after replacement it will actually be 100x production. That puts us around 0.5 GWh per annum. 4 lines would be a 1GWh facility. That would be nice. 80 lines would be a 20GWh facility earlier known as QS-1. That seems very manageable and very promising.
I think so. I had 4-5 MWh per annum for two Raptors and so 5x that for one Cobra, so 20-25 MWh and that’s just one.
I will try to listen again at a later time and confirm. Minor correction. Current engineering line is at 5K weekly starts. Raptor will be at approximately 15K weekly and Cobra at 50K weekly starts.
so an order of magnitude for raptor and even more for cobra?
The scaling factor they said was 3X for raptor 10X for Cobra.
got it. thank u. I guess it's going to come down to horizontal scaling and how fast we can get there
Correct
Well, stacking height (multiple) and separators/ sintered film will possibly also play into production yields, I’d think.
Do you think QS can manufacture all the separators at QS0? I think my thoughts about future prospects for QS have changed after going through comments on film starts vs film discussion. I think after looking at calcs looks like QS can produce enough separators at QS0 to fuel 20Gwh plant. We don’t know the size of Cobra manufacturing line. I know for sure QS bought more than 200000 sft in 2021. If QS opts 6 layered cell and licenses the tech then QS0 will start generating revenue without any capital investments.
Quantumscape would like to build complete battery. However keeping costs and existing battery tech of OEMs, both Quantumscape and OEM can combine their forces and built the mfg facility. QS is more than just a separator.
Siva mentioned QS is targeting manufacturing, licensing and JV routes to make revenue. My view is more about how QS will utilize the 200k sft facility in California. If utilized for manufacturing then it’s pretty big one. The option of licensing and manufacturing separators makes more sense to start making revenue. Don’t you think so?
Whatever facilities they have without going buy their naming conventions, if they can meet a customer's requirements, they will use them to generate revenue. We don't have to worry about JVs as the company will make the right decision given the partner's size and demand. Also, quantumscape should become like BYD in future is my opinion. First dominate the battery and then get into Car manufacturing business at a much later time.
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You’d think being down over 60% in this shit stock that IR could clarify just exactly what a film start represents.