The Electric Flash Analysis: The Customers Many Battery Startups Are Overlooking

If you are worth your salt in the lithium-ion battery business, you are working on a new-generation anode, a cathode, an electrolyte—or all three. You are aiming to both break new ground and earn billions of dollars to boot by powering the electric vehicles that are about to swamp the global market. But what if EVs are a buzzy diversion and the real action in batteries right now is powering smart watches, smart glasses and wearable fitness devices?

Around the middle of the decade, most of the world’s major automakers and a slew of startups are planning to introduce scores of new, mass-market–priced EVs into the global market. But that’s at least four years into a still-uncertain future, and it appears that many high-flying battery startups that intend to serve the automakers—like QuantumScape, Solid Power, SES and Cuberg—are overlooking the potential for a substantial, faster profit in smaller game.