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From The Mobilist Inbox This Week
Solid state showdown, manufacturing bloodbath, and charging on the go
Each Wednesday, The Mobilist highlights reader articles on Medium, comments, and updates.
Battery transparency evangelism: As I wrote last month, QuantumScape CEO Jagdeep Singh, until recently one of the most secretive figures in batteries, has of late been jarringly different — an evangelizing convert to data openness. This week, Singh is out with a new challenge to rivals — what he calls a side-by-side comparison of the major commercial solid state batteries.
The chart, posted on QuantumScape’s website, is a barely veiled shot over the bow of its rivals. But, in the battery community, some fired back. The chart, they said, leaves out some basic data. Among them was Jordi Sastre, a PhD candidate in Switzerland who studies solid state batteries. Sastre, while complimenting the chart, tweeted that it should have included specific energy density, the key to how far an EV will go on a charge.
The coming manufacturing bloodbath: The Biden administration and others are talking up the prospect of tens of thousands of new jobs in a clean energy economy. But very little is being said about the jobs calculus between combustion and electric vehicle manufacturing: As my former Quartz colleague Akshat Rathi…
