QuantumScape Stock Is Up 20% Today. Here’s Why.

If you’ve been waiting for another lively day in trading of QuantumScape’s stock, your wait is over.

Shares of QuantumScape (QS), which is developing batteries for electric vehicles, were recently up 20% to around $9.50. They still have a way to go to reach summer highs—in July they closed above $14—but the move is welcome news to investors who were wondering what might be next after watching the stock’s summer spike, which at the low end saw the shares back below $8.

Today’s move was powered by the news that the company, along with Volkswagen’s battery company PowerCo, demonstrated its solid-state lithium-metal batteries in a Ducati motorcycle at an event in Germany. QuantumScape said it is now poised to “scale our transformative technology to gigawatt-hour production.”

Broadly speaking, solid-state batteries are seen as offering a longer-lasting, safer, and quicker-to-recharge alternative to current batteries. “We are now firmly in the commercialization phase of our company,” executives said in July.

The company’s July update likely inspired some investors to take profits after a wild runup from closing prices below $4.50 in late June; it included a pullback in the high end of its estimated capital spending range for the year, perhaps contributing to some wariness on shareholders’ parts, though it also turned more optimistic about the depth of full-year adjusted EBITDA losses.

A big chunk of that wariness seems to have worn off today.