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The lab at QuantumScape, a Silicon Valley start-up whose investors include Volkswagen and Bill Gates, in San Jose, Calif., on Feb. 4, 2021. The company is working on a technology that could make car batteries cheaper, more reliable and quicker to recharge. (Gabriela Hasbun/The New York Times)Shareholders of California-based QuantumScape Corp, a battery startup backed by Volkswagen AG, have approved a multibillion-dollar pay package for Chief Executive Officer Jagdeep Singh, who could receive stock options potentially valued at $2.3 billion, subject to the company meeting some performance milestones. The announcement triggered comparisons with the package that Tesla awarded Elon Musk in 2018, and spotlighted the potential of this nascent sector, some of whose flagbearers are yet to bring a product to market. A quantum leap ADVERTISEMENT QuantumScape’s solid-state battery — lithium metal with a solid electrolyte separating the two electrodes — is seen as an exceptionally bright prospect in an increasingly crowded space. The company, which was co-founded by Singh a decade ago and received financial backing from Volkswagen and Bill Gates’s venture fund, listed late last year and was valued at almost $50 billion within a few months on the promise that its novel battery technology could offer a safer, cheaper alternative to lithium-ion batteries. Earlier efforts to build a solid-state separator (electrolyte) capable of working with lithium metal had to compromise on aspects such as the cycle life and operating temperature of the battery, and the issue of excess lithium deposits on the anode. QuantumScape claims to have circumvented this: its use of a solid state separator technology eliminates the side reaction between the liquid electrolyte and the carbon/graphite in the anode of conventional lithium-ion cells.