Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks again for joining us at day two of TD Cowen’s second annual Sustainability Conference, which is being held virtually. I'm Gabe Daoud, TD Cowen’s Charging Energy and Battery Analyst. Next up, we're delighted to host QuantumScape’s CEO, Dr. Siva Sivaram. QuantumScape, as I'm sure folks on the line are fully aware, is attempting to bring to market a solid-state lithium metal battery for the use in electric vehicle applications. And the company is leveraging its IP around its ceramic separator, which will enable the use of a lithium metal battery and drive ultimately energy density benefits, fast charge benefits, and safety benefits as well. So with that, Siva, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Gabe. Good to be here. So how about we, Siva, just start with a little bit of a background on yourself and what attracted you to the QuantumScape opportunity? Obviously, you're fairly new in your CEO seat, so we'd love to get maybe some of your takes on how it's been going so far, and yeah, what attracted you to the QuantumScape opportunity. Gabe, you are indeed correct. This is three months and one week in the job. I'm a 40-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, and I had some stints in solar as well. My strength has been in taking difficult technologies into very high volume production. Whether it is 3D NAND or high volume hard drives, or in solar, I have had an experience of taking very difficult technologies from enabling the technology to all the way to very, very high volume production in customers' hands. As I was finishing up my focus in Western Digital, where I was the president of Western Digital, which is a very large data storage company, I was looking for an opportunity where I could make an impact. And I was talking with Jagdeep Singh, the then CEO of QuantumScape, and we had a very nice, long conversation. I dug deep into the technology at QuantumScape. Here is a place which has got a pedigreed set of people who have done some amazing things. We had a technology that is truly impactful, right at the point of turning from technology into product. I thought this was a perfect place for me to come back, come in and do something great with this technology. Our job collectively at QuantumScape is now taking this well-developed technology into very high volume as soon as possible to enable this energy storage revolution. That's where we are today. Okay. Good, very helpful. You also just recently filed your latest, shareholder letter at the end of Q1. Could you maybe talk a little bit about some of the highlights within the letter? You reiterated the 2024 goals. Maybe just talk a little bit about the roadmap for this year and what we should be paying attention to. Yeah. I'm prone to giving explicit, measurable goals for every year and then making sure the investors actually see us hit it. So for us, we had four goals set up for 2024. The first of it is to take this intermediate step to a product called Alpha-2, and getting that in customers' hands. And Alpha-2 is a well-integrated, product-like, near product battery that we could get in the customer's hand to test the things out for themselves and get feedback from them. Because the best way to iterate to a product is to make sure there is something constantly in a customer's hand where they are testing and coming back to us. When I take the Alpha-2 and integrate it with a Raptor film, and I put that in a 24-layer package, then I have the full product, that QSE-5, that we'll be shipping later this year. So the second major milestone, which is the definitive transition into product, is us delivering low-volume production of QSE-5 B-samples, which we will do end of this year. The other two enabling steps for this that we also wanted to make sure that investors knew are getting Raptor, which is an order of magnitude step up in productivity of our ceramic separator, and then the very high volume that is going to be ready for next year for high-volume B-samples, getting it ready in-house for enabling that ramp next year. Those are the four major deliverables: Alpha-2, B-sample low-volume samples, making sure that we have Raptor running in volume, and getting Cobra ready for production. And you'll see as we achieve this, we will come back and talk to you about it. In the first quarter, we did indeed ship our Alpha-2s. We have them in customers' hands, and that's as promised that I came to do at that time. Okay, great. Yeah, definitely want to dive into a little bit more or dive into each of those a little bit more. Let's maybe just start with the ultimate product that you hope to commercialize, which is QSE-5, 5 Ah pouch cell, 24-layer, targeting, I think, you know, over 800 Wh/L in energy density. Maybe talk a little bit about why the 5 Ah pouch cell, or it, it's actually not a pouch cell, but it's your, it's in your proprietary form factor. But why the 5 Ah capacity is the right number to be focused on, and maybe why potential EV OEMs will be interested in a 5 Ah cell? Right. So as you would expect, you could go into any shape, any form factor for different EV manufacturer, depending on what they want. We've been in contact with our customer, and we are starting. This 5 amp hour, our FlexFrame package in this size, is ideally suited for multiple applications. You could see it is roughly the size of a typical consumer product, while at the same time it is roughly the same as a commercial EV cell that is already in the market today, so the 5 amp hour. So it, it roughly compares. What it allows us to do is, as our first product, make something that is broadly applicable and make sure we can ramp in high volume, allows us that learning step as we keep coming along. I'm a big believer in iterative steps. The idea of when you have the technology, as you are trying to commercialize it, make sure that you can make something very quickly, build it into a product, put it in the customer's hands. And QSE-5, the 5 amp hour cell, is a perfect location for us to get started. Okay. Okay, that, that certainly makes sense. So I guess moving backwards now, you talked about Alpha-2, which is obviously an iteration that gets you closer to the commercial, commercialized product. So Alpha-2 is a two-layer cell with a higher cathode loading, and you've showed some pretty interesting fast charge data on that cell with the 1C rate. Maybe, maybe talk a little bit about the importance of Alpha-2. You ship those, maybe any kind of customer feedback so far? And the customers are, are okay taking, you know... So I guess if the commercialized product is a five amp-hour, the Alpha-2 is substantially lower, it's probably still, what, a milliamp-hour type capacity, so- Can I just take one step back before you go too far? Yeah. It is not two-layer, it is a six-layer cell. Okay. So it allows for the multi-stacking, making sure the customer sees that there are multiple layers in it. What we don't have. The only difference between the Alpha-2 and the final product are two things: A, it is not wrapped as films yet. Mm-hmm. It is not 24 layer, but 6 layer. That's the only difference between this. So everything else is like the product. Okay. It's the same cathode, or nearly the same cathode. We'll continue to refine it further as we keep going on, as you know. And everything else is in the same kind of package. We are ready to go take this into volume. So that's the reason Alpha-2 is an important step. It is almost a product-like form factor. Okay. You're right, so I apologize, misspoke. It's a 6-layer, not a 2-layer. And you showed a 10%-80% state of charge in less than 15 minutes. Can you talk about that impact on maybe cycle life? Are you able to demonstrate that level of charge on consecutive cycles, or is that once every 5 cycles? Just maybe talk about the fast charging capability, how that impacts cycle life. Yes. We have already shown to you earlier on a 1C-1C charge, all the way up to 1,000 cycles with a 95% retention, with, by our data and by a customer. We continue to maintain that this technology can handle that level of reliability over time. We have done many different fast charging cycle life experiments to make sure we look at it across temperature, across charge, across state of charge, to make sure that this technology, the ceramic technology that we have put in as a separator, its big enabling feature is its long-term reliability. What we did show in the Alpha-2, which I want to spend a little bit more time talking about, is the fast charge is one half of the answer, the other half is fast discharge. Mm. So what we have, what we are now showing to you in each step of the way is I have already showed you cycle life, showing 1,000+ cycles. I've shown you 24 layers separately. I've shown you separately the high-loading cathode. I'm now integrating many of these in steps in Alpha-2 and showing. You can see the stepwise thinking on both the construction and the performance. The energy density, the power density, the charge, the discharge, the temperature, all of those individually demonstrated, and the construction individually demonstrated. So as the product gets integrated, you can see all of them coming together. So in this case, the fast charge capability, as you can see, we have repeatedly shown this to you. We had shown you earlier with 2-layer under 15 minutes. Now we are showing with six-layer, with the same high loading cathode, with less than 15-minute charge. We also showed very rapid discharge, where in a 100 kWh battery pack, over 1,000 horsepower capability in discharge. And when that discharge is happening, how good is my range to make sure that I have enough energy density when I'm discharging that fast? That combination of charge time, discharge capability, energy density, and the combination of them, both power and energy at the same time, that is enabled by the ceramic separator. And that's, it's just not possible for us without having that anode-free, lithium metal, ceramic separator. That's what makes this whole thing happen. Understood. Understood. That's helpful. Okay, and as you, I guess, now scale from Alpha-2 to ultimately the commercialized product, which is 24 layers, as you scale from 6 to 24 layers, and maybe just talk a little bit about expectations around performance, and maybe what some of the challenges could be as you go from 6- 24 layers? Yeah. So in this stepwise progression of growth, we are obviously constantly pushing the energy density to go higher and higher as we go along. And because of the number of layers and the efficiency goes up, energy density naturally goes up as we stack more into the same package, both in, both, especially volumetrically and gravimetrically, it, it simultaneously goes up, which we, we, we have, we have said that, and it'll continue to do. The more important thing for me is now to have a Raptor film in the, in the package, the 24-layer, and demonstrated it. The Raptor film is coming along very well. In order to improve the productivity, we need to have upstream automation, downstream automation, metrology, those things have to be set up. They're all coming together very well. We are starting to ramp. Once we put that together, when I have sufficient amount of volume of these Raptor films that come out, then I can build a volume of 24 layers that I can continue to test in all these conditions that we have. So for this year, our biggest focus is making sure Raptor ramps up, and I can make 24-layer B-samples in small volume. Now, I want to be careful about the number of layers, etc. I don't want you to get fixated on it, as we just get 6 or 2-6 layer. The number of layers, whether it is 22, 24, 25, we will work with our customer in the launch vehicle as to what the right amount is. It's going to be in that numbers. Okay. Around there. Okay. That's, that's helpful. Maybe since Raptor's the key to it all for this year, could you talk about the Raptor process and where you are? I believe there's some site acceptance testing going on some of the equipment. Could you maybe provide us an update on that as well? Yeah. So Raptor, the biggest difference between our current process of record and Raptor is how fast the sintering times. So when we take it through the high temperature step, the high temperature processing of the ceramic requires certain amount of extreme precision, and we have speeded that up by an order of magnitude. And when you put that together, the rest of the automation has to keep up with it. The sintering process has been well qualified, released, as we said last year itself. End of last year, we talked about the fact that our high temperature processing step, the Raptor step, has been released into, into production. The site, site acceptance had been done. Our bigger thing now is it has to match with all the other steps that need to come in and back and forth. So, in a serial process, it is not just enough to have that one critical step well qualified, the rest of the steps have to. And that all is now coming in. We are either in site acceptance or in qualification. Many of them are getting completed, and by this summer, we want to be starting to ramp the volume on Raptor. And it is going exactly as we had planned and predicted. There are no surprises so far. Oh, okay. Okay, great. And the equipment, how, how customized is this? And is these, is this equipment from, you know, typical vendors that, that we should be thinking about for, for battery or even semiconductor equipment, or? It surely is not semiconductor equipment. So- Please don't even mention them, because I know how expensive, how finicky semiconductor equipment are. These are robust battery-type equipment. But given that this is ceramic processing, and that is not typical of a battery production, certain steps are unique to us. But these are very conventional equipment. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel here. We are trying to be from commercial vendors, maybe customize it here and there just to make sure during, especially during development time, we have additional level of scrutiny measurements possible. But these pieces of equipment are very, very typical equipment. Okay. That's helpful. Okay, so Raptor is the steppingstone to Cobra, which I guess will enable higher volume B samples at some point next year. Maybe just talk a little bit about that step change. Yeah. Cobra is literally the breakthrough that just made sure this becomes a commercially and economically viable long-term solution. When you take that high temperature step and increase it another order of magnitude, both in footprint and in throughput. The process becomes that much more efficient in terms of cost, in terms of equipment cost, in terms of equipment throughput, equipment footprint, and productivity. Cobra is an enabling piece for the high-volume production of the QuantumScape technology. And we have demonstrated it. We have demonstrated it in in-house equipment. Or as we have said, by the end of the year, we'd have had the critical key pieces of the Cobra process, the tools will be in-house, and we'll be running them. So then that sets up for early next year to start putting all the pieces upstream, downstream pieces together, so we can run high volume B-samples in calendar 2025. And that enables. Remember, B-samples in the end are determined by customer. Customer comes and says, "Yes, I have verified it. Yes, I'm willing to let it go as B-samples, and I go into volume." Anything further from there is very customer dependent, and it. We are getting to a near final process and equipment set for us to make the QSE-5 cells. Okay. Okay, got it. That's helpful. And at one point in time, you had disclosed your – we're running at, like, 8,000 separator starts a week, going to, you know, a much higher number. Could you help us maybe put into context, like, if that number is still the right number we should be thinking about? And then also, like, separator starts per week, what's the expectation of yield off of those? I know. I do think that, we were probably a little too prescriptive in those numbers given to you. In the large processes like these, we can improve efficiency of production continually. What we are saying now is, at least the way I am describing it, is you're gonna have about a 3x improvement in output out of the Raptor process this summer compared to what we had as a baseline. So I'm not giving you precise numbers, but to give you an order of magnitude, it's about a 3x improvement in productivity. That's what I'm counting on for this summer. Okay. Okay, got it. Got it. Okay. Maybe, switching gears just a little bit and taking a step back and just thinking about the overall backdrop and negative EV sentiment and concerns about growth slowing. Even some of the incumbent battery providers have noted 2024 is more or less a transition year or a slow year of growth. So maybe, from your perspective, do you agree with these comments? What are your, what are your thoughts on the overall EV market backdrop? Let me, Go ahead. I was talking with someone last night about this same phenomena. People who are talking that the EV transition may not happen, may be limiting, are like people in 1990s who said search is not a big business, or are people who said, "Hey, conventional flip phones will stay, and smartphones are not gonna happen." I mean, look, this is gonna happen. Now, having said that, the current offerings leave a little bit short of customer expectations, whether it is in range anxiety or in charge time anxiety. People do feel a little bit worried for the-- they don't feel like they get the price to value. They don't feel the... And which is a perfectly reasonable place for a consumer to feel. And so when you've taken care of the early enthusiasts, before I can get to the majority, you do need to cross that. Today's batteries, however good lithium-ion has come along, is not going to be able to do that. Our current growth in lithium-ion, where there is this profitless prosperity that is going with the volume going up from various countries coming in, there's not much more. The profits are all gone, and we are getting incremental technology gains or manufacturability gains on this. This 1, 2, 3% gain will not be able to push you past that threshold that the customers are looking for. That's where the next generation batteries do need to come in. We are at the start of our S-curve. We are at the start, very start of us showing that this is a completely different trajectory. For us to come and show that the next generation of batteries can give you that charge time, that range, that safety, that cycle life, that is, at the cost that the customer expects. You are not going to be able to do it without the kind of breakthroughs that we are—QuantumScape is now coming into, into making a product out of. So in a way, the current slowdown is sort of to be expected, and it sets the stage for a company like QuantumScape to come back and show what is possible in the future. For us to come and say: You don't need to make a compromise between power, charge time, and energy density and range. You can actually get both. You can get both in a very safe battery. You can get that both in a battery that lives 1,000 cycles, a very long time. These kinds of stepwise breakthroughs are what are going to revive the EV market to where it needs to go to the next level. Mm-hmm. We are very, very positive about what's happening in the marketplace and where we are going to fit into it. Okay. Okay, great, great. Maybe on that note, some of the incumbent lithium-ion providers have talked about commercializing solid-state. CATL recently even noted they'd like to produce small volumes by 2027, and they actually noted from a technology readiness standpoint, it's maybe at a four. But then also Samsung has talked about commercializing solid-state, I think also by 2027. So maybe just talk a little bit about the incumbents and what they're doing, and, you know, I guess, do you see that as a competitive threat or maybe a confirmation of the solid-state technology getting close to being commercialized? We would love to get your thoughts on that. Yeah, there is, you said the both sides of it. People recognize that lithium-ion has been pushed to as far it can be pushed. You do need next. For everybody, there's a catchphrase called, "Oh, solid-state batteries." When you put a solid-state battery with an anode-hosted material, you know, it's the worst of both worlds. This is... That's the compromise where you're going to add complexity and not get the... You can call it a solid-state battery, but it doesn't, it doesn't get you, the energy density or the power density that you're gonna need. There are people who are trying to do that. Mm-hmm. Other people who are coming back to say that, "Yeah, I'll make a solid-state battery, but it requires 100 atmospheres of pressure to run it," or some big number. Mm-hmm. Or they come and say, "You know, I can make it run, but I can run it only at a very, very narrow temperature range. You can't take it too cold, you can't take it too hot. As long as it's in the Goldilocks, I can, I can, I can make that happen." And either temperature or pressure or cycle life or... This is hard to... This technology is not easy. Mm-hmm. We have a substantive lead in the marketplace. We have a very unique technology. The ceramic separator, solid-state separator, was not an accident that we have it made. We've spent $2 billion of R&D that has gone into developing this particular battery. So we hold the lead in it. It is... Let me put it this way: I will take upon myself that it is on my shoulders that we need to get this commercialized and into volume, and show the customer the value that we have created. Yes, the fact that CATL or the consortium of BYD and CATL are, Samsung and Korea are all talking about it, it does validate the fact that this is the right way to go. To come up with a lithium metal, anode-free, very high density, low pressure, very high power, broad temperature range battery, there's no one else in our quadrant. Yeah. Yeah, that is certainly impressive. Maybe in the last few minutes here, let's talk about commercialization roadmap and, you know, you have identified a prospective launch customer, which I think the market, kind of, believes to be Volkswagen, is their, you know, they're your big, big investor in the company, and they've obviously publicly commented on Alpha-1. So maybe just talk about commercialization, the launch customer, and what are the forms of commercialization? Like, what do the business models look like? So as we have told you, we are working with at least six OEM partners in this. There's no lack of interest in our technology, and we continue to get inbounds all the time. We are being very selective. We have pure-play EV players to high volume broad spectrum EV players, different geographies. Every possible combination, we have them in our customer set. With each of them, we are also exploring all business models, whether it is manufactured by us, whether it is manufactured by them, whether it is manufactured in some joint fashion, whether in a capital light model, in a intense model, all of those are being evaluated with them. We are, as I mentioned earlier, going to be in high volume B-sample next year, and when it goes across all of us, you are going to see some clarity in the business model going forward that we can disclose to you. For now, our job is fairly straightforward: Keep the focus short term. In 2024, I told you what the four things I will do, and we want to deliver it. In 2025, we know we get to be in high volume B-samples with Cobra in it. We will make sure that we are you are seeing it. You're gonna be sampling it widely. As we do the right things at the right time, as soon as possible, these ideas of what is the right business model will emerge automatically, and we'll be discussing that with you in further conferences. Awesome. Okay. Well, that's great. Well, well, thanks so much, Siva. We're just about up on, on 30 minutes here. Appreciate the time. It's good, good discussion. Looking forward to you all achieving your goals in 2024, and we'll, we'll chat again soon. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me, and I want to make sure you do read these forward-looking statements because we had a far-ranging conversation. I want to make sure that the risks are understood. But thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk with you today. Awesome. Of course. Thanks, everyone. Have a good day.