A Short-Seller Attack on QuantumScape Suggests a Forlorn New Reality for Exotic Batteries
As great as they might be, the best may not be good enough to dislodge trusted lithium-ion
QuantumScape, the sizzling darling of battery investors from Silicon Valley to Wall Street, Europe and beyond, is the object of a fierce short-selling attack. Its assailant is Scorpion Capital, a little-known guerrilla outfit that yesterday released a 188-page, scorched-earth indictment that, in bold, black-and-red font and yellow highlight pen, accused QuantumScape of fraud and other transgressions. QuantumScape’s share price plunged 12.2% by the close of trading.
The report is a relentless, repetitive, often reckless assault that detracts from numerous valid doubts about QuantumScape: As of now, the startup hasn’t produced an actual battery, but only a cell half the size, in ampere-hours, of an Apple Watch. QuantumScape makes much of its supposedly liberal release of data, but many of its battery peers think it’s actually been pretty miserly, and that the data it has released has led to just more questions.
Scorpion made a particularly incendiary accusation: that QuantumScape’s management, while allegedly hiding all these problems, intends to “pump and dump” the stock — to unload their shares…
