QuantumScape plans 100 MWh solid-state battery line for data centres

QuantumScape Corporation (NASDAQ: QS) has announced plans for a 100 megawatt-hour solid-state battery production line targeting AI data centres, aerospace and defence customers. The San Jose-based company has named Muehlbauer Group, the German manufacturing automation specialist, as its primary equipment partner for the project, with production start targeted for 2028.

The announcement marks a significant step beyond QuantumScape's existing Eagle Line pilot facility, which the company currently uses to demonstrate scalable production of its solid-state lithium-metal cells. Muehlbauer, which has around 4,500 employees across 40 global locations and over 45 years of experience in high-precision assembly, evaluated the Eagle Line processes and has since developed design enhancements intended to support mass-production throughput. Engineering work on the higher-throughput line is now under way.

The partnership

Josef Markus Mühlbauer, chief executive of Muehlbauer Group, said the Eagle Line "proved to us that QuantumScape's solid-state technology is ready to scale to the next level," adding that the company had worked on-site in San Jose to develop the scale-up plan. QuantumScape president and chief executive Siva Sivaram described Muehlbauer as bringing "top-tier system integration capability" and a "scalability mindset necessary to bring our groundbreaking technology to the gigawatt-hour scale."

QuantumScape did not disclose the commercial terms of the partnership, the capital expenditure required to build the new line, or the specific customer commitments underpinning the 100 MWh capacity target. No named data-centre operator, aerospace customer or defence contractor was cited as an anchor buyer.

Market context

Solid-state batteries have attracted sustained interest from the data-centre sector as operators search for alternatives to conventional lithium-ion uninterruptible power supplies. The energy-density and safety advantages of solid-state chemistries are particularly relevant to high-density AI compute facilities, where thermal management and rack-level power delivery are intensifying constraints. However, the path from pilot-scale to gigawatt-hour mass production has proved commercially difficult across the sector. Several well-funded solid-state battery companies, including those focused primarily on the electric-vehicle market, have experienced repeated schedule slippage and cost overruns during scale-up.

Muehlbauer brings relevant cross-sector credentials: the company holds a leading position in semiconductor die-sorting automation and serves the majority of global RFID production demand, suggesting genuine precision-manufacturing depth. Its involvement lends engineering credibility to the programme, though production timelines in battery manufacturing are routinely aspirational at this stage.

Regulatory and standards read-across

Data-centre battery installations in the US and EU face a layered compliance environment. UL 9540 certification for energy storage systems and IEC 62619 safety standards for stationary lithium-based batteries typically govern procurement decisions for large operators. For aerospace and defence applications, MIL-spec qualification processes add further lead time. None of these certification pathways were addressed in the release, and their completion timelines will bear directly on whether QuantumScape can convert the 2028 production start into commercial revenue in those verticals.

QuantumScape has not yet booked commercial revenue from its solid-state battery technology. Investors and potential customers will watch for named offtake agreements, disclosed capacity-reservation terms, and demonstrated cell-level performance benchmarks at production scale as the 2028 target approaches.