More than 100 firefighters and a hazardous materials team were working Wednesday night to combat a fire involving lithium ion batteries and prototype cars at General Motors’ design studio in Pasadena, authorities said.
At one point, a firefighter was trapped in the structure amid the ferocious blaze and sent out a mayday call.
The Pasadena Fire Department responded to the fire in the 600 block of Sierra Madre Villa Avenue at 5:50 p.m., according to department spokesperson Lisa Derderian. The incident was declared a four-alarm fire — signifying a catastrophic blaze that requires the mobilization of significant fire department resources — due to the scale of the structure and the hazardous materials involved.
A firefighter is among dozens battling a fire Wednesday at the General Motors design studio in Pasadena.
(Hon Wing Chiu / For The Times)
“This is one of the largest structure fires we’ve had in Pasadena in many, many years,” Derderian said.
Preliminary reports indicated that lithium ion batteries and concept cars burned inside the building; however, the incident remained active Wednesday evening, and the cause of the fire is under investigation, she said. Some of the burned cars appeared to be gasoline-powered vehicles.
It took firefighters more than an hour to track down the source of the blaze as thick smoke engulfed the 149,000-square-foot campus. General Motors invested more than $71 million in 2021 to build the three-building facility as a new base for its Advanced Design Center.
The blaze is challenging to combat as crews cannot use water to extinguish lithium ion battery fires. Doing so can cause a destabilizing chemical reaction, leading more batteries to catch fire or explode.
“Firefighters on scene have trained in scenarios like this, but it does put a different twist on extinguishing fires,” Derderian said.
Large lithium ion battery fires can take several hours or even days to render safe.
The fire burned lithium ion batteries and concept cars at the General Motors facility, officials said.
(Hon Wing Chiu / For The Times)
When one battery cell overheats, it can trigger a chain reaction where nearby cells also overheat. This reaction releases heat and toxic gases and can continue deep inside the battery pack long after visible flames are put out.
There was a mayday call when a firefighter became trapped inside the fire-engulfed building Wednesday evening. But fire crews were able to locate him and pull him out of the structure without injuries.
“He did not wish to be transported [to a hospital], but it was a very scary few minutes there until they determined that he was OK,” Derderian said.
Fire crews are searching the entire campus to ensure there is no one else trapped inside, she said. Crews will remain on scene overnight as they continue to deal with the hazardous materials involved in the blaze.
Styling your up-do while you’re traveling has become easier with the introduction of cordless curling irons and hair straighteners but it has also gotten more complicated to fly with these hair care tools.
Lithium-ion batteries used to power cordless hair styling tools allow these devices to have faster charging and longer usage times, and are thus more reliable, according to the Growth Market Reports, a market research and business consulting firm.
But replacing the cord with a battery for power is what’s keeping the devices out of the cargo section of the plane.
Plug-in hair straighteners and curling irons don’t have any flight restrictions so you’re free to pack them in your carry-on or check-in luggage.
But the TSA said their counterpart has restrictions: cordless hair styling tools that are powered by lithium metal or lithium ion batteries or gas or butane fuel are only allowed in carry-on bags. That’s so that passengers or flight attendants can react if they start to overheat in the cabin. If they overheat or combust in your checked bag in the cargo area of a plane, it may take a while for anyone to notice.
As an extra protective measure, the hair care tool must have a safety cover securely fitted over the heating element.
Doing your haircare on the fly? Allow us to iron out the details:
•Cordless curling irons with a gas cartridge or butane are ONLY permitted in carry-on bags. •One per person. •Must have a safety cover fitted over the heating element. •No spare cartridges.
Cordless hair styling tools, with the specific battery, gas or butane fuel, are only allowed in carry-on bags due to their combustible nature, according to a TSA spokesperson.
Lithium-ion batteries, for example, can overheat resulting in heavy smoke and in some cases fire, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Items that are commonly powered by such batteries include battery packs, e-cigarettes, cell phones and laptops. These items are only allowed to travel with you in your carry-on bag.
If the items, “catch fire in the cargo area where checked bags are transported, there’s no one there to put it out,” Daniel Velez, spokesperson for Florida’s TSA, told the Florida Times-Union.
On a flight from Lihue, HI, to Los Angeles International Airport in July, a passenger’s e-cigarette overheated inside their backpack, according to an FAA report of the incident.
The flight attendant secured the e-cigarette in a thermal containment bag without injury, damage to the plane or flight interruptions.
There have been a total of 644 verified incidents of lithium batteries creating smoke, fire or extreme heat between 2006 and 2025, according to the FAA.
Of the total number of incidents, 482 occurred in the passenger area of the plane and 136 occurred in the cargo area.
Lee Zeldin announces national EPA battery safety guidelines
Long Island communities voice concerns over fire risks
Battery storage tied to New York’s clean energy goals
Lee Zeldin was back on Long Island on Monday to discuss lithium-ion battery storage facilities. Zeldin, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, was at the Hauppauge Fire Department, where he announced new guidelines for battery storage.
The visit takes place as proposals for battery storage facilities have been considered in several communities, including Hauppauge, Holtsville, and Glenwood Landing. Elsewhere in the nation, fires have broken out in the last 15 months at lithium-ion battery storage facilities. On Long Island, residents are raising concerns about potential safety risks, health impacts and environmental consequences – particularly in densely populated areas where families live, work, attend school and gather for worship.
“It’s the local first responders who are going to be in danger in dealing with this,” Zeldin, a former congressman in New York, said.
Many towns across Long Island have temporarily halted the development of battery storage facilities as they reassess safety concerns. “This is a regional issue: this isn’t a Nassau County issue, it isn’t just a Suffolk County issue, it’s the whole of Long Island together who don’t want these battery warehouses in their communities,” Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said in a news release about guidelines.
The EPA said in a news release that New York State’s Renewable Action through Project Interconnection and Deployment Act “dramatically expanded state power to override local opposition” for projects that include battery storage facilities.
But the state maintains that permitting for these facilities are already handled at the local level. Recently, the state enacted what FDNY officials describe as “among the most stringent” battery energy storage safety regulations in the country.
The storage systems play a role in the state’s reduced-carbon energy initiatives. But Zeldin, in a news release about the battery energy storage systems, charged it was “partisan push to fill yet another delusional ‘green’ goal.”
Yet the state maintains that the EPA’s stance is not protecting the environment.
“Lee Zeldin’s job is to protect the environment, but he has been doing anything but that,” Ken Lovett, senior communications advisor on energy and environment for Gov. Kathy Hochul, said in a written statement to LIBN.
“His continued assault on clean energy and his push for rollbacks on environmental protections will hurt everyone in his home state of New York and across the country and fly in the face of the federal government’s claim of wanting U.S. energy independence,” Lovett said. “While other states are rapidly investing in storage to stabilize their grids and lower costs, Zeldin’s approach risks leaving New York’s economy behind and forcing New Yorkers to pay.”
Meanwhile, Zeldin said, the EPA has issued the “guidelines based on our own experiences, our own lessons learned, the technical expertise that we have.”
Zeldin said that “the next time there is a lithium fire, our agency is ready to be there.”
Lithium-ion batteries have come a long way, but in many ways they haven’t come far enough.
They charge faster than ever before, but there’s still room for improvement. The materials they’re made of, particularly cobalt and nickel, are pricey and problematic. Researchers have been scrambling to find alternative materials, from manganese to sodium. Now they might have another: TAQ.
Unlike nearly every other lithium-ion battery chemistry, TAQ is an organic compound — not the free-range hippie type, but the kind made primarily of carbon. Researchers have been investigating organic materials as cathodes, the negatively charged part of the cell, because they could store more energy at lower cost. But so far, candidate materials haven’t been very durable because they tend to dissolve in the liquid electrolytes commonly used in the industry today.
The new material doesn’t dissolve in two widely used electrolytes, and it sports an energy density that’s 50% better than one of the most common lithium-ion battery chemistries in use today, nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC).
TAQ, short for bis-tetraaminobenzoquinone, is composed of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen arranged in a row of three neighboring hexagons. The structure is similar to that of graphite, which is almost universally used today as an anode material (the positive terminal). Each TAQ molecule is attracted to up to six others through hydrogen bonds, which aren’t as strong as other bonds but are sufficient to create a nearly flat sheet of the stuff that can be layered atop each other with the holes storing lithium ions.
The material was discovered by Tianyang Chen and Harish Banda while they were working in the lab of Mircea Dincă, a professor at MIT who has a partnership with Lamborghini to help the hypercar manufacturer electrify its lineup. Lamborghini, which previously used a supercapacitor developed in Dincă’s lab in its Sian model, has licensed the patent on the material.
QuantumScape(NYSE: QS) stock has disappointed a lot of investors since its public debut on Nov. 27, 2020. The developer of solid-state batteries went public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and its stock started trading at $24.80 before skyrocketing more than fivefold to its all-time high of $131.67 less than a month later.
But today, QuantumScape trades at less than $10. The bulls lost their patience for three reasons: The company wasn’t generating any revenue yet, it was still deeply unprofitable, and the electric vehicle (EV) market was cooling off. Rising interest rates also broadly drove investors away from speculative pre-revenue companies.
Image source: Getty Images.
QuantumScape’s stock should remain volatile until it actually commercializes its batteries and generates stable revenue. But could it stabilize and revisit its all-time high over the next five years? Let’s review its roadmap to find out.
QuantumScape wants to disrupt the lithium-ion battery market
QuantumScape’s solid-state batteries run on solid electrolytes, which are less volatile, more resistant to higher temperatures, charge faster, and last longer than the liquid electrolytes used in lithium-ion batteries. Solid-state batteries are already used in pacemakers, wearable devices, and small radio-frequency identification (RFID) products, but they haven’t been mass-produced for mobile devices and EVs because they’re generally pricier and harder to mass produce than lithium-ion batteries.
Nevertheless, QuantumScape aims to commercialize solid-state batteries for EVs over the next few years to address the growth and evolution of the EV market. Volkswagen has a lot of faith in QuantumScape’s plans — it became the company’s top investor and manufacturing partner more than a decade ago.
QuantumScape is currently developing a solid-state battery for EVs with a range of 400-500 miles and a charge time of less than 15 minutes. Its newest design could expand that range to 600 miles with a charge time of less than 30 minutes.
QuantumScape’s technology sounds like a game-changer for the EV market, but it already faces a lot of competition. Toyota plans to start mass producing its own solid-state batteries by 2028, China’s Nio has been testing out its own battery which has a range of more than 600 miles, and scientists in South Korea aim to replace lithium-ion batteries with hydrogen-powered “aqueous rechargeable” batteries.
QuantumScape has high hopes for 2028
During its pre-merger presentation, QuantumScape claimed it would start commercializing its batteries in 2024 and ramp up its production through 2028. It predicted its revenue would rise from $14 million in 2024 to $6.44 billion in 2028 — which would represent a stunning compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 363%.
QuantumScape plans to start shipping its first low-volume samples in 2024 and high-volume samples in 2025, but it hasn’t provided any updated revenue forecasts.
Yet the company’s mass production plans still seem to be on track. Volkswagen’s battery unit PowerCo recently completed its first endurance test for QuantumScape’s solid-state battery, and found that it “achieved more than 1,000 charging cycles with still more than 95 percent capacity” — so an EV could potentially drive over 310,000 miles “without any noticeable loss of range.” By comparison, lithium-ion batteries tend to lose 10% of their range after 200,000 miles.
According to Precedence Research, the global solid-state battery market could grow at a CAGR of 38% from 2023 to 2028. The firm expects that growth to be driven by the increased adoption of those batteries across consumer electronics, industrial machinery, Internet of Things (IoT), wearables, and EV markets.
But a lot of optimism is baked into QuantumScape’s valuations
QuantumScape’s stock has plummeted more than 90% from its all-time high, but it still has an enterprise value of $2.2 billion. That’s a nosebleed valuation for a company that hasn’t generated any meaningful revenue yet.
For now, analysts expect the company to generate just $2 million in revenue in 2024 and $15 million in revenue in 2025 — so it might be falling at least a year behind its optimistic pre-merger targets. Based on those estimates, it’s already valued at nearly 150 times its 2025 sales — so it could still have a lot of downside potential if it fails to ramp up its production.
On the bright side, QuantumScape’s insiders bought more shares than they sold over the past 12 months. Volkswagen’s firm commitment to the company also suggests it has a good shot at commercializing its solid-state batteries.
Where will QuantumScape’s stock be in five years?
QuantumScape still has a lot to prove, and its stock could easily be cut in half before it doubles. But over the next five years, it could rise a lot higher if it starts mass-producing its solid-state batteries. It could also become a lucrative takeover target for Volkswagen as it expands its EV business. However, investors who can’t afford to buy and hold the stock for at least the next five years should steer clear — since it could be an extremely bumpy ride before its business finally stabilizes.
Should you invest $1,000 in QuantumScape right now?
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Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nio and Volkswagen Ag. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
