Run the Numbers · Nov 9, 2026 · 48m · 39m saved
With Kevin Hettrich, CFO of QuantumScape
QuantumScape's early manufacturing tool was about five orders of magnitude, roughly 100,000 times, short of what car batteries would need to cost. Kevin Hettrich, CFO of QuantumScape, told CJ Gustafson on Run the Numbers that putting that gap on paper let the company drop the method without an argument. Most deep-tech teams try to improve the process they already have; QuantumScape chose a riskier path that could close the gap faster.
"We are off of 5 orders of magnitude. Is it impossible that we can innovate our way there? But it seems kind of hard." — Kevin Hettrich
Kevin, a Stanford-trained engineer, wrote QuantumScape's first product requirements document as its first product manager before he became CFO of a company that spent roughly 15 years proving its battery could exist.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 48 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 10 principles that matter.
Key Takeaways
An early QuantumScape tool was 5 orders of magnitude short of automotive cost targets, and the analysis ended the debate about it
QuantumScape tracks "cycle time of learning" from idea to data as a company metric
QuantumScape moved from a joint venture to licensing in 2024, leaving the billion-dollar factories to PowerCo
Kevin borrowed the chip industry's split between Nvidia, TSMC and ASML
Licensing gives QuantumScape 2 cash flows: high-margin royalties later and paid development work now
QuantumScape keeps core materials and cell design in-house and hands the rest to partners such as Corning and Murata
Kevin says product decides what to build and finance decides what to fund, and saying no is one of their most valuable jobs
1. From Product Manager to CFO
Kevin joined QuantumScape as its first product manager and later moved into the CFO job. He sees both roles as weighing what each of the company's four functions (development, sales, operations and finance) can actually deliver.
Kevin Hettrich prefers decisions settled by a number rather than by opinion
"A beautiful thing about numbers is that they are precise. It's not a yes or no, or maybe — it is a number." — Kevin Hettrich
