Discovering new battery materials could “unlock a billion-dollar opportunity,” said Benjamin Boeser, director of open innovation at Mercedes-Benz Research and Development North America. “We could simulate the actual behavior of a battery with a quantum computer, which is currently not possible with existing computer power,” Mr. Boeser said. While traditional computers store information as either 0s and 1s, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which represent and store information as both 0s and 1s simultaneously. Nobody has yet built a quantum computer that can be used for large-scale applications, but companies and governments around the world are investing heavily in developing the technology. Daimler expects electric car models to represent between 15% and 25% of Mercedes-Benz’s total unit sales by 2025, Mr. Boeser said.

Source: Wall Street Journal February 25, 2019 22:41 UTC