Let me clear some things up as I have experience with places like VTT (but not VTT specifically) in my career.
VTT is a company that you pay to run tests for you. You bring them a product, tell them what tests you need done, and then they do them with honesty and expensive well calibrated gear. Frequently you also send engineers along with your product to provide on the spot support for the testing. It's very likely it was a Donut engineer who setup the cell, attached the heatsinks, adjusted the connections, etc. This is pretty standard, VTT just runs verified tests, they're not experts on your product. Then they give you an official honest report recapping the tests done and the results.
VTT is not an auditor for verifying claims, at least beyond the scope of the test you task them to do. They are a friendly business partner that you pay large amounts of money to for getting you verified tests done on your product.
I really cannot stress enough that VTT is not in it to disprove anything. It's incredibly suspect that in a battery capacity test, Donut did not have VTT verify cell weight or dimension. It's also important to understand that VTT would not request to do this either, because VTT just runs the tests you pay them to, as you tell them to do it. So if donut shows up with a different cell for each test, VTT would not skip a beat, because they are not auditing, they are just doing the tests they are paid to do.
Normally places like VTT thrive on compliance testing, where a regulation outlays the tests needed to be passed, and VTT provides the service of being the third party to run and sign off on those tests. Those tests are then submitted to the regulating body and they are the ones who pass/fail you, not VTT. They just do tests and collect money.
So Donut is writing their own "regulations" here, so they are just having VTT do whatever tests they want as they want them done.
The real test would be someone not affliated with donut taking one of these cells to VTT.
Since they are testers and not auditors, what prevents Donut Labs from changing the actual battery sent for testing, selecting whatever works best for that specific test? In aggregate each test would seemingly validate their claims, only nobody ever validated and audited the fact that the same exact battery was used in all the tests.
As many have said, so many red flags around something so exceptionally revolutionary that you'd need extremely strong and unquestionably real proof.
Nothing, that's why this comes off as largely performative and awfully suspect.
Let me put it this way - these labs are functionally pretty similar to a Qwest diagnostics or Lab Corp. Those places draw your blood and run tests on it. The prescription tells them the tests to do, and the doctor is the one who evaluates the results. The labs are just a dumb tool to do the testing as prescribed.
Donut in this case is writing their own prescription and then posting the results. Just like a lab, they don't interrogate you to see if you are manipulating your blood results. That's the doctor's job. And ultimately at the lab it's just a lowly tech going through the same motions they go through every day.
Nothing prevents that, and the test lab wouldn't bat an eye at that. For all they know or care, you wanted to run different test on different cells. The only thing the lab is verifying is that the defined test was executed as stated, nothing else.
I have seen so much engineering scams over the years and this is precisely the thing that they all do.
It reminds me of E-cat. Anyone remembers cold fusion? They had same modus operandi. Lots of revolutionary claims but testing was so contrived and limited and lots of conditions that in the end no one was allowed to truly confirm it. .
This repeats the exact steps of that purported miraculous energy device.
Photos and "looks pretty small" are not technical parameters that you pay tens of thousands for a lab to certify.
There are a bunch of cutting edge cell technologies out there right now with gangbusters specs but have some kind of fatal flaw.
If Donut was serious they would put the full specs of the tested cell in each report, so people could have higher confidence that each tested cell is the same chemistry. VTT would have no issue weighing and measuring each cell before and after testing.
> how can we be sure that it's the same cell from the charge performance test?
I would imagine they will run the same tests again. Light testing for specific things during development or scaling, increased testing as you feel more confident in the product.
This doesn't really follow the usual battery scam pattern, does it?
Like, EEStor or Nikola with big claims, timelines pushed years out, raise a ton of money, delay forever. Donut announced at CES and said bikes ship Q1 2026 which is weeks from now. They've raised ~€25M total (QuantumScape has burned through $1.5B+). And apparently they're not doing a big fundraise right now either.
If it's a scam it seems like a really bad strategy? You're basically setting a timer on your own credibility.
I've been reading around and the thing I keep landing on is the Nordic Nano connection. They're a Finnish nanotech company Donut invested in, and they published specs for a "bipolar electrostatic capacitor" with basically identical numbers - 400 Wh/kg, 100k cycles, fireproof. Does anyone with more battery knowledge know if this could be some kind of supercapacitor hybrid being marketed as a solid-state battery? The VTT report confirms fast charging works but doesn't say anything about energy density, cycle life, or what this thing actually is.
Seems like the energy density and cycle life reports (supposedly coming in the next few weeks) are going to be way more interesting than this one.
I really want this to be true, but the founder launching AGI 9 months ago doesn't help their credibility a lot. And drip-marketing test results seems like a super weird thing to do, whether it's real or it's not.
Don't forget that a lot of scams aren't initially on purpose. Eg Theranos by all accounts very gradually morphed from a mild "fake it till you make it" scheme (mild by Silicon Valley standards at least) into a full-blown scam over years of growth and funding, the lies needing to be deeper and deeper over time to cover up the earlier ones.
I guess all I'm trying to say is the fact that it's a bad strategy for a scam, doesn't really mean it's not a scam.
Those Verge motorcycles appear to actually exist and work though, so that's a data point in favour of this being real.
Yes, I want this too good to be true battery to be real and that's why I'm looking into such things but this claim is false.
He apparently launched "Artificially Superintelligence", which appears to be a marketing term for some architecture this company was working on. The "AGI" term seems to come from people who are going after this CEO.
I wasn't able to come up with people who claim that they were actually scammed, i.e. paid for a product that wasn't delivered or made an investment into something that doesn't exist.
This appears to be a much cleaner slate than the titans of AI. I'm inclined to believe that those alleged scams are not scams by SV standard.
> I wasn't able to come up with people who claim that they were actually scammed, i.e. paid for a product that wasn't delivered or made an investment into something that doesn't exist.
I'm gonna ask the other way around. Name one successful product by the CEO that has reached mass production and you can get it right now.
See my other comment [1]. There's dozen of failed products. That one AppGyver product is from 15 years ago. Since then, he hasn't created any other product. The motorcycle however is real. The battery may also be. The issue with Solid State Batteries is that it's almost impossible to scale them.
The guy changes the industry he's in as often to match what's currently popular.
Failed startup isn’t a scam, to be a scam it needs to be presented in a way that is designed to collect money but that money be used for something else.
Otherwise YC would have been scam center, very few of YC companies don’t fail.
That’s ridiculous, neither making your first product nor failing is scamming.
In this particular case you can buy motorbikes and sport cars made using electric motors from the same company that makes this battery. So at least 1 real product that I know of.
You cannot buy them. Have you visited their website? The way this works, you pay a non-refundable fee. And if this motorcycle turns out to be real, then you get to pay the rest amount (or cancel and lose some money). Because they manufactured a few units doesn't mean it's scalable (or profitable).
The motorbikes are not new, there are people who bought them and are using them. Switching to the new battery is new but those bikes with motors from this company exist. I think you need to do your research before arguing further.
If your research is YouTube then I'm sorry to disappoint you but those people are affiliated with Verge (or Donut). I don't think there's a single video where someone gives a review and they paid using all their own money, is there? Have you done your research before you started arguing the CEO is legit?
I’m pretty sure if I keep pushing you enough eventually you’ll will make your life about going after me accusing me of who knows what. This means that your opinions should not to be taken seriously as your motivations are unclear.
Yea sure Immich taking zero responsibility for possibly causing damages in hundreds of dollars and not warning their uses is fair, yeah, let them go. Maybe actually read the issues before judging? (oh noes, he blame them so he must be bad!)
I don’t care about immich etc, you just gave me the impression of someone who loves going after people. Your primary participation here appears to be for claiming that people committing scams, so I guess it’s your hobby. Maybe I am wrong but I also don’t see why we should argue as those scam claims are your opinions.
> I don’t care about immich etc, you just gave me the impression of someone who loves going after people
Man I don't want anything else but success for everybody. Once someone fs up, there's nothing bad in improving. Dismissing people because they are pointing bad things out doesn't help (referring to Immich).
> Your primary participation here appears to be fir claiming that are people committing scams
If their website makes fun of their "scam mark" (idonutbelieve.com), then maybe it's not just me? Maybe all other people from YT, Reddit, X are reasonably skeptical? If the battery turns out to actually be real, that's great! (I actually mean it.)
Having said all that, despite our disagreements, have a nice day. Maybe we just set off on a wrong foot and the future will be brighter.
I don't think you're going to see investors crashing out on the internet that they got scammed. The ASI video by the CEO shows exactly that he has no idea what's happening. Seems like an investor pitch scam. I wish that the battery was true tho. It's always amazing to see progress in the world.
I never said that. If I did, prove me by quoting me.
This aside, all I said is that you don't get to hear that on the internet, because such stuff is unpopular and doesn't usually bring attention. And if they signed an NDA, the lawsuit may be not public.
All links were obtained from the CEO's LinkedIn page. The last one is definitely a scam. They ask for your money and promise that their magical algorithm will give you profit.
The first one has fake "featured in", Privacy Policy does not exist and almost all those websites were using Wordpress (perhaps made by the same guy?).
> Does anyone with more battery knowledge know if this could be some kind of supercapacitor hybrid being marketed as a solid-state battery?
A few Youtubers have pushed the "if it's not a scam, it's probably a novel capacitor" hypothesis, but in their video announcing this test series last weekend, Donut Labs claimed "it's not a capacitor", so I don't know what's going on.
Yeah, if it's a scam, at least we don't have to worry about it for too long. If we don't have third-party test results and/or the bikes in testers' hands in the next 37 days, then we can be pretty sure that it's just bogus.
The founders have sketchy track records. They do a carefully managed social media build-up. There are credible rumors that they’ve been simultaneously raising money by cold-calling moderately wealthy people around the country. (Finland has extremely little oversight for private fundraising; you can basically sell shares in your zero-revenue startup to grandma next door — as long as you’re careful about wording your claims as “projections”.)
So lots of red flags. Everyone would love it to be real of course because it’s been a long since Finland’s tech scene had a global hit like Nokia and Supercell… And perhaps the Donut founders are counting on that mood.
The electric motorbike company (Verge Motorcycles) owned by the same people also has such bad accounting/paperwork that they could not find an auditor willing to give an opinion.
"According to the auditor's report, no opinion was given on the company's financial statements because sufficient audit evidence was not available."
The company claims to have a couple million in inventory but no system saying anything about what is in their inventory, 300k in revenue in Finland without any papertrail of it actually happening, 2.5 million in R&D without any explanation/papertrail on what it was spent on (salaries? materials? machines?), etc.
Also the company has taken really expensive loans from family members of the leadership (12% interest which is way over the market rate).
They said "Available Today" on January 4th but have said actually customer deliveries are planned for April.
> “The first customer deliveries will probably take place in April. There are production-related issues, getting subcontractors involved. Starting production. A lot depends on the goods and officials.”
As far as I can tell, no solid-state TS Pro (the TS Pro itself is not an entirely new model and has been around for a couple of years) has been delivered to any customers yet. They're supposed to be delivered in Q1/26, so it shouldn't be too long if they intend to keep their promises. Although if you were to order one today, your bike wouldn't arrive until Q4/26 according to their website.
You have no idea how scams work, do you? Visit this website [1] by the CEO and tell me it's not a scam. Tell me there exists some magical algorithm, where I give you my money and you promise me to 2x it and give it back. Please do tell me that.
In startups 2x isn’t enough, you usually expect 100x or 1000x returns. That’s the main idea behind investing: You give your money to someone who may have better use of it so you may get it back multiple but may also lose it.
As for the website you linked it appears to be promoting a trading bot and I don’t see any promise of guaranteed 2x returns, which would have been a scam. Maybe I missed it, can you point it out?
No, I do know how they work. Normal startups close the second they become unprofitable because investors don't like losing money. Or find someone that's willing to pull your sinking ship up (a buyout). Also, if you intentionally lose investors' money, they have the right to sue you for damages. Losing hundreds of thousands of dollars is pretty normal in failing startups, but it's not like they don't have any value. There's a difference between a half-baked legitimate product and a snake oil. However, losing tens of millions of dollars is not normal.
> guaranteed 2x returns, which would have been a scam
They haven't written 2x, but they have promised profits (which is more than 1x): "Sit Back and Watch Your Wealth Grow". That's literally a Ponzi scheme. They're no Medallion Fund because if the algorithm was actually working they wouldn't need to attract people to get more money.
Maybe you should get off HN from time to time and face a reality check.
> Normal startups close the second they become unprofitable because investors don't like losing money
Completely and demonstrably wrong. Startups lose money all the time, thats the idea behind taking other people’s money. Go check out how much money Amazon, Uber, OpenAI and pretty much all startups lost before becoming profitable or are still losing.
I’m sorry I see you are clueless. I wouldn’t be arguing with you any further.
To clarify some misconceptions regarding what they do and don't have in their current motorcycles, as of Feb 2026:
All of current existing Verge motorcycles have a "traditional" lithium ion ~20kWh battery pack[0], very much on par with competition in all specs. They do exist and a few indeed appear to be in owners' hands (according to Facebook Verge fangroup posts and pics), and they can be test ridden. One of their showrooms is in Valley Fair in San Jose, CA. I have tested one of them. It feels and seems to perform well, as advertized and as physics allow, despite the hubless engine and skepticism around that. However, the test ride was ~30 minutes and there's so few of those bikes out there, that there's virtually no data on longevity.
What currently does not exist is a Verge motorcycle with the battery that they claim to be testing here. They have announced that all their offerings will feature their solid state battery later this year, increasing the energy capacity to ~30kWh. That remains to be seen.
It's nice that they have what they claim is a solid state battery. But having a small prototype isn't that big a deal at this point. All the major players have prototype solid state batteries that work. Nobody has volume production yet, and volume production seems to be hard and expensive, according to CATL and Samsung.
Mercedes has a test car with a solid state battery.[1] The battery is from Factorial Energy. There's only one such car, and they don't say how much it cost to make the prototype battery.
Ducati has a test motorcycle with a solid state battery.[2] The battery is from QuantumScape. There's only one such motorcycle.
Here's Fraunhofer IKTS making a solid state battery at lab scale.[3] The whole process is shown. Huge amount of effort to make one coin cell.
Samsung prototype.[4] Samsung has been talking about shipping tiny solid state batteries for wearables in 2026. Still too expensive for cell phones, which gives a sense of cost.
All the serious players can make a prototype by now. But the chemistry that's used for the prototypes may not be suitable for production. They have to balance capacity, weight, charge time, cycle life, manufacturing cost, and materials cost. (Samsung made a battery with a substantial silver content. It works, but that's not going to be a volume product)
These problems will be overcome, because throwing money at them works. The history of the tungsten-filament light bulb is worth reviewing. Making fine tungsten wire is very difficult. From 1913 to 2010, a huge plant in Euclid, Ohio, made most of the tungsten wire for light bulbs. There were a lot of process steps.[5]
Precisely. People are questioning the wrong things, I find it really easy to believe that Donut has a 400Wh/kg battery that can do 11C charging. Because that's something that can be easily externally verified, and they are sending that battery out to testers, and also because the existence of such a battery isn't new or shocking, many labs have prototypes in roughly the same performance envelope.
But that doesn't mean they have a winner, if the battery was ridiculously expensive to make. Their claims about cost are much more suspicious, and they have shown no proof about them.
It should be said that in the LinkedIn post announcing this the clams are much more moderate. Like “10% along what we consider to be AGI” and “lots of work left to do” if I remember correctly. How is that different from any other R&D company working on AI? They all claim to be on the path to AGI in some form
I don't know about that, the last 4 years everyone is selling magical AI and AGI is around the corner. Including every single top 10 rich people.
Was this AI proven to be any more fake Than Sam Altman, Elon Musk or Dario Amodei's one? Did he took similar level of money and delivered less than the promised?
What's the scam exactly? They don't seem to claim AGI anyway, they say Artificial Super intelligence which is like every AI company claim.
You seem to be on a mission against this CEO, maybe you can clarify a bit more about the scams you believe he is committing?
First report for Donut lab battery is out. Here is the TLDR
Specs
26 Ah nominal capacity at 1C discharge rate
94 Wh nominal energy with 3.6V nominal voltage
Operates within 2.7V – 4.15V recommended range (max charging to 4.3V)
What was verified
5C charging (130A): 0-80% in ~9.5 minutes, 0-100% in ~13.5 minutes
11C charging (286A): 0-80% in ~4.9 minutes, 0-100% in ~7.3 minutes
Successfully delivered 98.4-99.6% of charged capacity even after extreme 11C charging
Thermal Management
Tested with both one-sided and two-sided heat sinks to simulate real-world conditions
With dual heat sinks: Peak temps of 47°C (5C) and 63°C (11C) — well within safe limits
With single heat sink: Reached 61.5°C (5C) and up to 89°C (11C) — still functional but approaching thermal limit
Missing claims
Energy density: No weight and volume was mentioned
Cycle life: VTT ran only 7 test cycles total.
Cost Claims: Nothing about cost is mentioned
Material Claims: No chemical analysis or materials analysis.
Extreme Temperature Performance: No cold weather testing. No high-temperature testing.
No abuse testing: No nail penetration, no overcharge, no short-circuit, no crush tests.
But according to the company website another report will drop next monday (March 2nd).
> Energy density: No weight and volume was mentioned
Note that the report includes some photos of the battery, so we can assume that it's not, like, several orders of magnitude larger than what they advertised.
EDIT: Honestly, I'm pretty excited. Even if their promises on cost and materials don't pan out and the lifetime turns out to be terrible, what they've just demonstrated is already a game-changer.
It’s good to know that it does at least perform about as well as current conventional batteries. The energy density and cycle life were the really off-the-wall claims. It’s exciting to hear that they’re continuing to test, can’t wait for more third party results!
Edit: Reading the report, they talk about “charge capacity” (Amp hours in/out) efficiency of 98.4% to 99.6%, but this seems potentially misleading. The actual charge energy efficiency is more like 90%.
> Successfully delivered 98.4-99.6% of charged capacity even after extreme 11C charging
Note the Wh numbers for discharge vs. charge energy.
> Discharge capacity Charge capacity Discharge energy Charge energy
The energy density isn't out of line if this is a true solid state battery. The cycle life, though, is AFAIK. I don't believe solid states have that sort of cycle life.
Apparently the first 3rd party test was on fast charging and the 3rd party is VTT, which is the government affiliated(owned?) "VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland"
The people listed on this report appear to be on LinkedIn, so I guess it will be easy to confirm if the test document is authentic.
> Apparently the first 3rd party test was on fast charging and the 3rd party is VTT, which is the government affiliated(owned?) "VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland"
It is a govenrment owned non-profit company.
As one of its services it will independently verify your product/invention/whatever works as claimed (for a bunch of money).
I’ve been digging into the data (using Gemini and a few other sources). The claims behind https://idonutbelieve.com/ are pretty bold. I’d like to be optimistic, but I’m going to wait for more independent verification before drawing any conclusions.
I desperately want this to be real but LK-99 thought me to be skeptical of big announcements. AFAIK the Finnish media went brutal on them and science YouTubers reported some rumors about sketchy stuff but they seem to be rolling so far.
VTT appear to be a solid institution, so we will find out soon I guess.
Careful though, this test explicitly only tests the charge and discharge capabilities of the battery, not whether it's a solid state battery or not. According to ChatGPT, these results would in theory also be possible with a normal Li-ion battery. I am really hoping this is real though! And waiting for further tests.
FPV lipo batteries can charge at 5c all day, you might be able to get away with 11c for a few charges before degradation or becoming spicy. Agree that this proves nothing useful.
Sorry, I was trying to compose a post but I was a minute late so copy-pasted the content as a comment and forgot to adopt. Removing the redundant link. Thanks.
BTW, the people who conducted the test appear to be on LinkedIn. I guess its pretty easy to confirm if the test on the company site is authentic.
Elon Musk sells self driving cars since 10 years that don't self drive but his cars are actually decent cars and his rockets are revolutionary. Also, who isn't selling magical AGI since the last 4 years?
I think i will judge the battery and the magical AGI separately. The guy also sells magical motors that appear to be real with people riding motorbikes with those motors.
Actually, there are a bunch of other variables (energy density, stability, discharge current, etc. etc.), so the probability of a technology that improves one significantly without negatively affecting at least one other is vanishingly small. Hence the number of overhyped battery technologies that get reported but never productised.
They claim not only fast charging, long life and low cost, but also very high energy density, no degradation in low temperature, no thermal runaway, non-hazardous materials and no "geopolitical" needed.
Good to have a VTT report confirming the charging speeds, but the actual differentiator would be the energy density I guess, given that BYD has already proven <10min charging with an LFP battery in an actual car. (https://volta.foundation/battery-report-2025/ pg. 161)
BYD needs to be heavily liquid cooled/thermally managed to achieve that. The Donut battery only had metal heat sink on two or even one side - and its performance was even higher at high temperatures. LFP doesn't behave like that, I think?
Agree, didn't notice that at first in the results, it would potentially allow for less thermal management and even more density at pack level. Curious to see if VTT will also publish a report on the cycles.
The massive amount of production-oriented research in solid state and semi solid state batteries indicates to me that this stuff is coming soon in a big way. I've been curious about buying an electric car recently, and if I buy one right now it would only be a used one, don't want to fully invest in something about to be obselete.
The whole industry is always working on improved batteries. But it's a long road from lab-scale to mass production, and often improvements in one area have downsides in another.
New generations of cells that improve energy density usually start out more expensive than existing chemistries, so they show up at the high end of the market first and work their way down.
If we do get truly improved solid-state batteries available in EVs in the next 5 years, it will likely start at the high end of the market and work its way down over many years to cheaper segments as production capacity ramps up. The base model EVs aren't going to suddenly have their batteries swapped out with ones that are twice as good for the same price.
I make the same argument when I buy a computer. If I just wait a little longer, there will be a faster cheaper version of what I can buy today. When buying anything that depreciates, the best strategy is to wait (possibly forever) and only buy when you really need it now.
I hope you are right, but maybe this one is not like the previous ones. Micron leaving consumer market sounds like the real money will be on the AI hardware market.
Personally I bought my new laptop a month ago. Let's hope when I have to buy the next one this craziness will be history.
Apart from metrics like energy density and cycle life, shouldn't we also consider idle self-discharge rate or charged-state longevity when evaluating batteries? No one seems to be talking about that in this case.
> This project included independent charging performance tests on the energy storage devices supplied by the customer, which the customer identified as solid-state battery cells.
> which the customer identified as solid-state battery cells.
Because that's not independent verification that the device tested actually _is_ a solid state battery. Just that whatever was tested had certain charging characteristics.
Tbh the exciting part isn’t so much the composition but whether it can actually meet the claimed performance. It could be made of wet gym socks for all I care if it can do 100k charge cycles at 90degC with comparable energy density and specific power to LiFePO.
But that’s the point I’m making. You’re taking the claims that Donut Labs is making about it being a new type of battery at face value. Having someone verify charging characteristics isn’t that helpful without simultaneously verifying that the battery actually is what they’re claiming.
How is he taking it at face value? He’s saying it doesn’t matter. Which it really doesn’t.
The reason solid state is exciting is the promised high energy density, and in some cases better safety. We shouldn’t care if it’s really “solid state” or not. That’s just marketing fluff. It doesn’t even really have a good definition as some chemistries are somewhere in between (sometimes described as semi-solid state).
This test confirms the charging speed and basically confirms the energy density (estimates people have done based on the video/report put it in the ballpark of what’s claimed)
You and I should really not demand a test that it’s actually solid state. That just doesn’t matter. We need energy density tests, cycle life tests, puncture tests, etc. If all those specifications are confirmed, whether it’s solid state or not becomes completely moot.
And in the end what truly matters is if it can be mass manufactured at low cost, which can’t be tested anyway. All these social media demands for tests are kind of ridiculous, since the only thing publishing the tests does is give Donut more PR. They’re basically laughing all the way to the bank considering how easy it has been to manipulate YouTube, Reddit and HackerNews into giving them free press. We will have another round in a week when the next test is published. I’m honestly impressed.
Personally I reserve all judgement until the promised bikes are on the road and torn down by third parties.
The pdf also has a picture of it where you could possibly reverse Engineer the dimensions based on the other things in the picture. Looks very flat like an iPad battery
Let me clear some things up as I have experience with places like VTT (but not VTT specifically) in my career.
VTT is a company that you pay to run tests for you. You bring them a product, tell them what tests you need done, and then they do them with honesty and expensive well calibrated gear. Frequently you also send engineers along with your product to provide on the spot support for the testing. It's very likely it was a Donut engineer who setup the cell, attached the heatsinks, adjusted the connections, etc. This is pretty standard, VTT just runs verified tests, they're not experts on your product. Then they give you an official honest report recapping the tests done and the results.
VTT is not an auditor for verifying claims, at least beyond the scope of the test you task them to do. They are a friendly business partner that you pay large amounts of money to for getting you verified tests done on your product.
I really cannot stress enough that VTT is not in it to disprove anything. It's incredibly suspect that in a battery capacity test, Donut did not have VTT verify cell weight or dimension. It's also important to understand that VTT would not request to do this either, because VTT just runs the tests you pay them to, as you tell them to do it. So if donut shows up with a different cell for each test, VTT would not skip a beat, because they are not auditing, they are just doing the tests they are paid to do.
Normally places like VTT thrive on compliance testing, where a regulation outlays the tests needed to be passed, and VTT provides the service of being the third party to run and sign off on those tests. Those tests are then submitted to the regulating body and they are the ones who pass/fail you, not VTT. They just do tests and collect money.
So Donut is writing their own "regulations" here, so they are just having VTT do whatever tests they want as they want them done.
The real test would be someone not affliated with donut taking one of these cells to VTT.
Since they are testers and not auditors, what prevents Donut Labs from changing the actual battery sent for testing, selecting whatever works best for that specific test? In aggregate each test would seemingly validate their claims, only nobody ever validated and audited the fact that the same exact battery was used in all the tests.
As many have said, so many red flags around something so exceptionally revolutionary that you'd need extremely strong and unquestionably real proof.
Nothing, that's why this comes off as largely performative and awfully suspect.
Let me put it this way - these labs are functionally pretty similar to a Qwest diagnostics or Lab Corp. Those places draw your blood and run tests on it. The prescription tells them the tests to do, and the doctor is the one who evaluates the results. The labs are just a dumb tool to do the testing as prescribed.
Donut in this case is writing their own prescription and then posting the results. Just like a lab, they don't interrogate you to see if you are manipulating your blood results. That's the doctor's job. And ultimately at the lab it's just a lowly tech going through the same motions they go through every day.
Nothing prevents that, and the test lab wouldn't bat an eye at that. For all they know or care, you wanted to run different test on different cells. The only thing the lab is verifying is that the defined test was executed as stated, nothing else.
> It's incredibly suspect that in a battery capacity test, Donut did not have VTT verify cell weight or dimension.
The report does include a few photos, and the battery does look pretty small on them? So I don't think there's foul play there.
I have seen so much engineering scams over the years and this is precisely the thing that they all do.
It reminds me of E-cat. Anyone remembers cold fusion? They had same modus operandi. Lots of revolutionary claims but testing was so contrived and limited and lots of conditions that in the end no one was allowed to truly confirm it. .
This repeats the exact steps of that purported miraculous energy device.
Photos and "looks pretty small" are not technical parameters that you pay tens of thousands for a lab to certify.
There are a bunch of cutting edge cell technologies out there right now with gangbusters specs but have some kind of fatal flaw.
If Donut was serious they would put the full specs of the tested cell in each report, so people could have higher confidence that each tested cell is the same chemistry. VTT would have no issue weighing and measuring each cell before and after testing.
> It's incredibly suspect that in a battery capacity test ...
They would probably say this is because it's not a "battery capacity test" but a "charge performance test"
But I agree, when they eventually do have VTT perform a capacity test, how can we be sure that it's the same cell from the charge performance test?
> how can we be sure that it's the same cell from the charge performance test?
I would imagine they will run the same tests again. Light testing for specific things during development or scaling, increased testing as you feel more confident in the product.
This doesn't really follow the usual battery scam pattern, does it?
Like, EEStor or Nikola with big claims, timelines pushed years out, raise a ton of money, delay forever. Donut announced at CES and said bikes ship Q1 2026 which is weeks from now. They've raised ~€25M total (QuantumScape has burned through $1.5B+). And apparently they're not doing a big fundraise right now either.
If it's a scam it seems like a really bad strategy? You're basically setting a timer on your own credibility.
I've been reading around and the thing I keep landing on is the Nordic Nano connection. They're a Finnish nanotech company Donut invested in, and they published specs for a "bipolar electrostatic capacitor" with basically identical numbers - 400 Wh/kg, 100k cycles, fireproof. Does anyone with more battery knowledge know if this could be some kind of supercapacitor hybrid being marketed as a solid-state battery? The VTT report confirms fast charging works but doesn't say anything about energy density, cycle life, or what this thing actually is.
Seems like the energy density and cycle life reports (supposedly coming in the next few weeks) are going to be way more interesting than this one.
I really want this to be true, but the founder launching AGI 9 months ago doesn't help their credibility a lot. And drip-marketing test results seems like a super weird thing to do, whether it's real or it's not.
Don't forget that a lot of scams aren't initially on purpose. Eg Theranos by all accounts very gradually morphed from a mild "fake it till you make it" scheme (mild by Silicon Valley standards at least) into a full-blown scam over years of growth and funding, the lies needing to be deeper and deeper over time to cover up the earlier ones.
I guess all I'm trying to say is the fact that it's a bad strategy for a scam, doesn't really mean it's not a scam.
Those Verge motorcycles appear to actually exist and work though, so that's a data point in favour of this being real.
> the founder launching AGI 9 months ago
Yes, I want this too good to be true battery to be real and that's why I'm looking into such things but this claim is false.
He apparently launched "Artificially Superintelligence", which appears to be a marketing term for some architecture this company was working on. The "AGI" term seems to come from people who are going after this CEO.
I wasn't able to come up with people who claim that they were actually scammed, i.e. paid for a product that wasn't delivered or made an investment into something that doesn't exist.
This appears to be a much cleaner slate than the titans of AI. I'm inclined to believe that those alleged scams are not scams by SV standard.
> I wasn't able to come up with people who claim that they were actually scammed, i.e. paid for a product that wasn't delivered or made an investment into something that doesn't exist.
I'm gonna ask the other way around. Name one successful product by the CEO that has reached mass production and you can get it right now.
Well, AppGyver was real. SAP bought it, it's now called SAP Build.
Don't know how successful it was/is as a product though.
See my other comment [1]. There's dozen of failed products. That one AppGyver product is from 15 years ago. Since then, he hasn't created any other product. The motorcycle however is real. The battery may also be. The issue with Solid State Batteries is that it's almost impossible to scale them.
The guy changes the industry he's in as often to match what's currently popular.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47129369
Failed startup isn’t a scam, to be a scam it needs to be presented in a way that is designed to collect money but that money be used for something else.
Otherwise YC would have been scam center, very few of YC companies don’t fail.
That’s ridiculous, neither making your first product nor failing is scamming.
In this particular case you can buy motorbikes and sport cars made using electric motors from the same company that makes this battery. So at least 1 real product that I know of.
You cannot buy them. Have you visited their website? The way this works, you pay a non-refundable fee. And if this motorcycle turns out to be real, then you get to pay the rest amount (or cancel and lose some money). Because they manufactured a few units doesn't mean it's scalable (or profitable).
The motorbikes are not new, there are people who bought them and are using them. Switching to the new battery is new but those bikes with motors from this company exist. I think you need to do your research before arguing further.
If your research is YouTube then I'm sorry to disappoint you but those people are affiliated with Verge (or Donut). I don't think there's a single video where someone gives a review and they paid using all their own money, is there? Have you done your research before you started arguing the CEO is legit?
Your other posts are accusations about people and apparently you go after them on other sites too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46638491
I’m pretty sure if I keep pushing you enough eventually you’ll will make your life about going after me accusing me of who knows what. This means that your opinions should not to be taken seriously as your motivations are unclear.
You should consider having a different hobby.
Yea sure Immich taking zero responsibility for possibly causing damages in hundreds of dollars and not warning their uses is fair, yeah, let them go. Maybe actually read the issues before judging? (oh noes, he blame them so he must be bad!)
[1] https://szmarczak.com/immich.png [2] https://github.com/immich-app/immich/issues/25283
> you’ll will make your life about going after me accusing me of who knows what
I have never accused you of anything but lack of information. I don't get where you're coming from.
I don’t care about immich etc, you just gave me the impression of someone who loves going after people. Your primary participation here appears to be for claiming that people committing scams, so I guess it’s your hobby. Maybe I am wrong but I also don’t see why we should argue as those scam claims are your opinions.
> I don’t care about immich etc, you just gave me the impression of someone who loves going after people
Man I don't want anything else but success for everybody. Once someone fs up, there's nothing bad in improving. Dismissing people because they are pointing bad things out doesn't help (referring to Immich).
> Your primary participation here appears to be fir claiming that are people committing scams
If their website makes fun of their "scam mark" (idonutbelieve.com), then maybe it's not just me? Maybe all other people from YT, Reddit, X are reasonably skeptical? If the battery turns out to actually be real, that's great! (I actually mean it.)
Having said all that, despite our disagreements, have a nice day. Maybe we just set off on a wrong foot and the future will be brighter.
apologies then. have a nice one too.
I don't think you're going to see investors crashing out on the internet that they got scammed. The ASI video by the CEO shows exactly that he has no idea what's happening. Seems like an investor pitch scam. I wish that the battery was true tho. It's always amazing to see progress in the world.
scammed investors sue scammers all the times. I don’t know why you believe otherwise.
I never said that. If I did, prove me by quoting me.
This aside, all I said is that you don't get to hear that on the internet, because such stuff is unpopular and doesn't usually bring attention. And if they signed an NDA, the lawsuit may be not public.
Have you seen his comments on LinkedIn? Doesn't seem like the type of guy who's honest. He kept covering behind "send an rfq" or "sign an nda" or "we're a business not a newspaper" instead of proving anything. Also, here's some products that weren't delivered: - https://burstlive.io/ - https://stingbase.com/ - https://venturebonsai.com/ - https://shadowcapital.com/ - https://kaseygroup.com/ - https://www.definancetechnologies.com/
All links were obtained from the CEO's LinkedIn page. The last one is definitely a scam. They ask for your money and promise that their magical algorithm will give you profit.
The first one has fake "featured in", Privacy Policy does not exist and almost all those websites were using Wordpress (perhaps made by the same guy?).
I don't think you actually did research on him.
Any examples of scammed people? lawsuits?
Failed startups aren’t scams by default. You need someone who not only lost their money but lost it because they were misled.
I don't need a lawsuit to know that the latter is a Ponzi scheme. If you don't think so, feel free to try it out, not a financial advice tho.
You are free to have opinions
The founder reminds me of Kim "Dotcom", which worries me. I hope this thing is legit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom
> Does anyone with more battery knowledge know if this could be some kind of supercapacitor hybrid being marketed as a solid-state battery?
A few Youtubers have pushed the "if it's not a scam, it's probably a novel capacitor" hypothesis, but in their video announcing this test series last weekend, Donut Labs claimed "it's not a capacitor", so I don't know what's going on.
Yeah, if it's a scam, at least we don't have to worry about it for too long. If we don't have third-party test results and/or the bikes in testers' hands in the next 37 days, then we can be pretty sure that it's just bogus.
The weirdest tech story in Finland right now.
The founders have sketchy track records. They do a carefully managed social media build-up. There are credible rumors that they’ve been simultaneously raising money by cold-calling moderately wealthy people around the country. (Finland has extremely little oversight for private fundraising; you can basically sell shares in your zero-revenue startup to grandma next door — as long as you’re careful about wording your claims as “projections”.)
So lots of red flags. Everyone would love it to be real of course because it’s been a long since Finland’s tech scene had a global hit like Nokia and Supercell… And perhaps the Donut founders are counting on that mood.
The electric motorbike company (Verge Motorcycles) owned by the same people also has such bad accounting/paperwork that they could not find an auditor willing to give an opinion.
https://yle.fi/a/74-20205916 (article in Finnish)
"According to the auditor's report, no opinion was given on the company's financial statements because sufficient audit evidence was not available."
The company claims to have a couple million in inventory but no system saying anything about what is in their inventory, 300k in revenue in Finland without any papertrail of it actually happening, 2.5 million in R&D without any explanation/papertrail on what it was spent on (salaries? materials? machines?), etc.
Also the company has taken really expensive loans from family members of the leadership (12% interest which is way over the market rate).
But the motorcycles do exist and use these batteries don’t they?
Has no one bought one and torn it open yet?
They said "Available Today" on January 4th but have said actually customer deliveries are planned for April.
> “The first customer deliveries will probably take place in April. There are production-related issues, getting subcontractors involved. Starting production. A lot depends on the goods and officials.”
Translated from: https://web.archive.org/web/20260204130446/https://www.kaupp...
As far as I can tell, no solid-state TS Pro (the TS Pro itself is not an entirely new model and has been around for a couple of years) has been delivered to any customers yet. They're supposed to be delivered in Q1/26, so it shouldn't be too long if they intend to keep their promises. Although if you were to order one today, your bike wouldn't arrive until Q4/26 according to their website.
That will be the only thing to actually watch then. If they keep pushing that out then we will know it's a scam.
It's disappointing that this merry band of serial scammers are tarnishing Finland's reputation.
It's also a bit sus that someone creates an account just to bash them, when they themselves are already doing a great job to make it look like a scam.
Can you plase give more information about the scams(not opinions about scam but actual scams where he was exposed) this guy committed?
Who has the burden of proof here?
This is absolutely a scam.
Obviously those who claim to be a scam have the burden of proof. Guilty until proven innocent is not a thing, it’s the other way around.
You have no idea how scams work, do you? Visit this website [1] by the CEO and tell me it's not a scam. Tell me there exists some magical algorithm, where I give you my money and you promise me to 2x it and give it back. Please do tell me that.
[1] https://www.definancetechnologies.com/
I don’t think you understand how startups work.
In startups 2x isn’t enough, you usually expect 100x or 1000x returns. That’s the main idea behind investing: You give your money to someone who may have better use of it so you may get it back multiple but may also lose it.
As for the website you linked it appears to be promoting a trading bot and I don’t see any promise of guaranteed 2x returns, which would have been a scam. Maybe I missed it, can you point it out?
No, I do know how they work. Normal startups close the second they become unprofitable because investors don't like losing money. Or find someone that's willing to pull your sinking ship up (a buyout). Also, if you intentionally lose investors' money, they have the right to sue you for damages. Losing hundreds of thousands of dollars is pretty normal in failing startups, but it's not like they don't have any value. There's a difference between a half-baked legitimate product and a snake oil. However, losing tens of millions of dollars is not normal.
> guaranteed 2x returns, which would have been a scam
They haven't written 2x, but they have promised profits (which is more than 1x): "Sit Back and Watch Your Wealth Grow". That's literally a Ponzi scheme. They're no Medallion Fund because if the algorithm was actually working they wouldn't need to attract people to get more money.
Maybe you should get off HN from time to time and face a reality check.
> Normal startups close the second they become unprofitable because investors don't like losing money
Completely and demonstrably wrong. Startups lose money all the time, thats the idea behind taking other people’s money. Go check out how much money Amazon, Uber, OpenAI and pretty much all startups lost before becoming profitable or are still losing.
I’m sorry I see you are clueless. I wouldn’t be arguing with you any further.
Before you post any further I'd highly recommend watching this series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFKhprphIAA
You just don't get to spend tens of millions just because.
Good to know mr. investor.
I have this bridge.. it's for sale, interested?
To clarify some misconceptions regarding what they do and don't have in their current motorcycles, as of Feb 2026:
All of current existing Verge motorcycles have a "traditional" lithium ion ~20kWh battery pack[0], very much on par with competition in all specs. They do exist and a few indeed appear to be in owners' hands (according to Facebook Verge fangroup posts and pics), and they can be test ridden. One of their showrooms is in Valley Fair in San Jose, CA. I have tested one of them. It feels and seems to perform well, as advertized and as physics allow, despite the hubless engine and skepticism around that. However, the test ride was ~30 minutes and there's so few of those bikes out there, that there's virtually no data on longevity.
What currently does not exist is a Verge motorcycle with the battery that they claim to be testing here. They have announced that all their offerings will feature their solid state battery later this year, increasing the energy capacity to ~30kWh. That remains to be seen.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20260223173926/https://www.verge...
It's nice that they have what they claim is a solid state battery. But having a small prototype isn't that big a deal at this point. All the major players have prototype solid state batteries that work. Nobody has volume production yet, and volume production seems to be hard and expensive, according to CATL and Samsung.
Mercedes has a test car with a solid state battery.[1] The battery is from Factorial Energy. There's only one such car, and they don't say how much it cost to make the prototype battery.
Ducati has a test motorcycle with a solid state battery.[2] The battery is from QuantumScape. There's only one such motorcycle.
Here's Fraunhofer IKTS making a solid state battery at lab scale.[3] The whole process is shown. Huge amount of effort to make one coin cell.
Samsung prototype.[4] Samsung has been talking about shipping tiny solid state batteries for wearables in 2026. Still too expensive for cell phones, which gives a sense of cost.
All the serious players can make a prototype by now. But the chemistry that's used for the prototypes may not be suitable for production. They have to balance capacity, weight, charge time, cycle life, manufacturing cost, and materials cost. (Samsung made a battery with a substantial silver content. It works, but that's not going to be a volume product)
These problems will be overcome, because throwing money at them works. The history of the tungsten-filament light bulb is worth reviewing. Making fine tungsten wire is very difficult. From 1913 to 2010, a huge plant in Euclid, Ohio, made most of the tungsten wire for light bulbs. There were a lot of process steps.[5]
[1] https://electrek.co/2025/02/24/mercedes-tests-first-solid-st...
[2] https://www.ducati.com/ww/en/news/ducati-s-electric-research...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5SVrp8N-1M
[4] https://news.samsungsdi.com/global/articleView?seq=203
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuhapGSexyg
Precisely. People are questioning the wrong things, I find it really easy to believe that Donut has a 400Wh/kg battery that can do 11C charging. Because that's something that can be easily externally verified, and they are sending that battery out to testers, and also because the existence of such a battery isn't new or shocking, many labs have prototypes in roughly the same performance envelope.
But that doesn't mean they have a winner, if the battery was ridiculously expensive to make. Their claims about cost are much more suspicious, and they have shown no proof about them.
Here's the CEO Marko Lehtimäki selling his magic AGI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilgJKjiDLV8 :D
He's been a busy beaver!
It should be said that in the LinkedIn post announcing this the clams are much more moderate. Like “10% along what we consider to be AGI” and “lots of work left to do” if I remember correctly. How is that different from any other R&D company working on AI? They all claim to be on the path to AGI in some form
Thank you for sharing this, relevant context...
I don't know about that, the last 4 years everyone is selling magical AI and AGI is around the corner. Including every single top 10 rich people.
Was this AI proven to be any more fake Than Sam Altman, Elon Musk or Dario Amodei's one? Did he took similar level of money and delivered less than the promised?
What's the scam exactly? They don't seem to claim AGI anyway, they say Artificial Super intelligence which is like every AI company claim.
You seem to be on a mission against this CEO, maybe you can clarify a bit more about the scams you believe he is committing?
ASI is one step higher than AGI.
According to whom?
AGI is human, general level. ASI is super human level. Says so in the acronym itself.
Completely false. There is nothing about humans in these acronyms.
Here's a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence#Feasibility_...
Audio emdash
oh that's a great insult
Srsly. So it's all bogus then?
Yep, so it seems!
Definitely a scam.
First report for Donut lab battery is out. Here is the TLDR
Specs
What was verified Thermal Management Missing claims But according to the company website another report will drop next monday (March 2nd).> Energy density: No weight and volume was mentioned
Note that the report includes some photos of the battery, so we can assume that it's not, like, several orders of magnitude larger than what they advertised.
EDIT: Honestly, I'm pretty excited. Even if their promises on cost and materials don't pan out and the lifetime turns out to be terrible, what they've just demonstrated is already a game-changer.
It’s good to know that it does at least perform about as well as current conventional batteries. The energy density and cycle life were the really off-the-wall claims. It’s exciting to hear that they’re continuing to test, can’t wait for more third party results!
Edit: Reading the report, they talk about “charge capacity” (Amp hours in/out) efficiency of 98.4% to 99.6%, but this seems potentially misleading. The actual charge energy efficiency is more like 90%.
> Successfully delivered 98.4-99.6% of charged capacity even after extreme 11C charging
Note the Wh numbers for discharge vs. charge energy.
> Discharge capacity Charge capacity Discharge energy Charge energy
> Cycle 1 26.109 Ah 26.159 Ah 91.021 Wh 100.793 Wh
Yup, those 2 are the ones I really want to see.
The energy density isn't out of line if this is a true solid state battery. The cycle life, though, is AFAIK. I don't believe solid states have that sort of cycle life.
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Apparently the first 3rd party test was on fast charging and the 3rd party is VTT, which is the government affiliated(owned?) "VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland"
The people listed on this report appear to be on LinkedIn, so I guess it will be easy to confirm if the test document is authentic.
The announcement of the test: https://youtu.be/d2QU_LpkSPs
Hopefully, soon we will find out if this seemingly "too good to be true" is a revolution or something else.
> Apparently the first 3rd party test was on fast charging and the 3rd party is VTT, which is the government affiliated(owned?) "VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland"
It is a govenrment owned non-profit company.
As one of its services it will independently verify your product/invention/whatever works as claimed (for a bunch of money).
https://www.vttresearch.com/en
I’ve been digging into the data (using Gemini and a few other sources). The claims behind https://idonutbelieve.com/ are pretty bold. I’d like to be optimistic, but I’m going to wait for more independent verification before drawing any conclusions.
I desperately want this to be real but LK-99 thought me to be skeptical of big announcements. AFAIK the Finnish media went brutal on them and science YouTubers reported some rumors about sketchy stuff but they seem to be rolling so far.
VTT appear to be a solid institution, so we will find out soon I guess.
Careful though, this test explicitly only tests the charge and discharge capabilities of the battery, not whether it's a solid state battery or not. According to ChatGPT, these results would in theory also be possible with a normal Li-ion battery. I am really hoping this is real though! And waiting for further tests.
FPV lipo batteries can charge at 5c all day, you might be able to get away with 11c for a few charges before degradation or becoming spicy. Agree that this proves nothing useful.
> They also published the report here: https://pub-fee113bb711e441db5c353d2d31abbb3.r2.dev/VTT_CR_0...
That's the same link. Is there a way to attest that this is an official VTT report?
The person whose signature is on it, is listed on VTTs website with the same title.
Considering the amount of publicity this thing gets, VTT or the person will publicly refute it pretty soon if it's a fake.
Also, VTT had publicly confirmed earlier that they had conducted tests for Donut Lab.
I'm confident the document and tests are real, but other shenanigans are still possible (and likely IMO).
Sorry, I was trying to compose a post but I was a minute late so copy-pasted the content as a comment and forgot to adopt. Removing the redundant link. Thanks.
BTW, the people who conducted the test appear to be on LinkedIn. I guess its pretty easy to confirm if the test on the company site is authentic.
The PDF is digitally signed with a cert from the Finnish „Digital and Population Data Services Agency“
I think it is safe to assume, given the buzz all around the donut battery, that VTT would immediately release a statement if this report was fake.
edit: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/news-and-ideas/donut-lab-comm...
Unfortunately that's not the same as VTT.
VTT would be more like "National Institute of Scientific Research"
Well there's this press release they would publish a report: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/news-and-ideas/donut-lab-comm... with as author the same name on the digital signature "Petri Söderena" for Organisation "Teknologian tutkimuskeskus VTT" and the chain is attested by "DVV Organisational Certificates - G4E" which is on the EU/EEA trusted list: https://eidas.ec.europa.eu/efda/trust-services/browse/eidas/... (by name and key signature). Looks like a legit VTT document to me.
It says its sign by this guy: https://www.vttresearch.com/en/news-and-ideas/petri-soderena...
He has an e-mail address and a phone number, I doubt that if the report is falsified it won't come out.
I just found a video of the same guy selling some magical AGI thing 9 months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilgJKjiDLV8
Promising the moon and stars just like with Donut.
Donut Labs also had a video presentation of some kind of automotive design software that also sounded too good to be true.
This guy is a serial scammer.
Elon Musk sells self driving cars since 10 years that don't self drive but his cars are actually decent cars and his rockets are revolutionary. Also, who isn't selling magical AGI since the last 4 years?
I think i will judge the battery and the magical AGI separately. The guy also sells magical motors that appear to be real with people riding motorbikes with those motors.
Fast charging, long life, low cost – pick two.
Actually, there are a bunch of other variables (energy density, stability, discharge current, etc. etc.), so the probability of a technology that improves one significantly without negatively affecting at least one other is vanishingly small. Hence the number of overhyped battery technologies that get reported but never productised.
They claim not only fast charging, long life and low cost, but also very high energy density, no degradation in low temperature, no thermal runaway, non-hazardous materials and no "geopolitical" needed.
Good to have a VTT report confirming the charging speeds, but the actual differentiator would be the energy density I guess, given that BYD has already proven <10min charging with an LFP battery in an actual car. (https://volta.foundation/battery-report-2025/ pg. 161)
>BYD has already proven <10min
BYD needs to be heavily liquid cooled/thermally managed to achieve that. The Donut battery only had metal heat sink on two or even one side - and its performance was even higher at high temperatures. LFP doesn't behave like that, I think?
Agree, didn't notice that at first in the results, it would potentially allow for less thermal management and even more density at pack level. Curious to see if VTT will also publish a report on the cycles.
The massive amount of production-oriented research in solid state and semi solid state batteries indicates to me that this stuff is coming soon in a big way. I've been curious about buying an electric car recently, and if I buy one right now it would only be a used one, don't want to fully invest in something about to be obselete.
The whole industry is always working on improved batteries. But it's a long road from lab-scale to mass production, and often improvements in one area have downsides in another.
New generations of cells that improve energy density usually start out more expensive than existing chemistries, so they show up at the high end of the market first and work their way down.
If we do get truly improved solid-state batteries available in EVs in the next 5 years, it will likely start at the high end of the market and work its way down over many years to cheaper segments as production capacity ramps up. The base model EVs aren't going to suddenly have their batteries swapped out with ones that are twice as good for the same price.
I make the same argument when I buy a computer. If I just wait a little longer, there will be a faster cheaper version of what I can buy today. When buying anything that depreciates, the best strategy is to wait (possibly forever) and only buy when you really need it now.
Until you wait too much and end in a RAM shortage period due to AI...
My limited understanding of RAM prices are that they are very cyclical. Very expensive followed by very cheap. You just have to be willing to wait.
I hope you are right, but maybe this one is not like the previous ones. Micron leaving consumer market sounds like the real money will be on the AI hardware market.
Personally I bought my new laptop a month ago. Let's hope when I have to buy the next one this craziness will be history.
“Soon” is likely 5-10 years easily though.
Apart from metrics like energy density and cycle life, shouldn't we also consider idle self-discharge rate or charged-state longevity when evaluating batteries? No one seems to be talking about that in this case.
Fairly important bit here at the end:
> This project included independent charging performance tests on the energy storage devices supplied by the customer, which the customer identified as solid-state battery cells.
> which the customer identified as solid-state battery cells.
It's almost like there an implied "wait for part 7 guys and remember to like and subscribe"
why?
Because that's not independent verification that the device tested actually _is_ a solid state battery. Just that whatever was tested had certain charging characteristics.
Tbh the exciting part isn’t so much the composition but whether it can actually meet the claimed performance. It could be made of wet gym socks for all I care if it can do 100k charge cycles at 90degC with comparable energy density and specific power to LiFePO.
But that’s the point I’m making. You’re taking the claims that Donut Labs is making about it being a new type of battery at face value. Having someone verify charging characteristics isn’t that helpful without simultaneously verifying that the battery actually is what they’re claiming.
How is he taking it at face value? He’s saying it doesn’t matter. Which it really doesn’t.
The reason solid state is exciting is the promised high energy density, and in some cases better safety. We shouldn’t care if it’s really “solid state” or not. That’s just marketing fluff. It doesn’t even really have a good definition as some chemistries are somewhere in between (sometimes described as semi-solid state).
This test confirms the charging speed and basically confirms the energy density (estimates people have done based on the video/report put it in the ballpark of what’s claimed)
You and I should really not demand a test that it’s actually solid state. That just doesn’t matter. We need energy density tests, cycle life tests, puncture tests, etc. If all those specifications are confirmed, whether it’s solid state or not becomes completely moot.
And in the end what truly matters is if it can be mass manufactured at low cost, which can’t be tested anyway. All these social media demands for tests are kind of ridiculous, since the only thing publishing the tests does is give Donut more PR. They’re basically laughing all the way to the bank considering how easy it has been to manipulate YouTube, Reddit and HackerNews into giving them free press. We will have another round in a week when the next test is published. I’m honestly impressed.
Personally I reserve all judgement until the promised bikes are on the road and torn down by third parties.
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Would be nice if they added some more detail about the battery like dimensions and weight, or did I miss that part.
You can take a look at the announcement video https://youtu.be/Y-aPS2AwMbc?si=RD4Ja8tJggLPgXGj
The pdf also has a picture of it where you could possibly reverse Engineer the dimensions based on the other things in the picture. Looks very flat like an iPad battery
As understand it the battery is 26 Ah and looks to be the size of my 20 mAh powerpack at home.
It seems From the video they don't look much bigger than a cellphone.
That was previously announced and CES and was described as "can be any shape and any size and any voltage within a reason".
The URL seems a bit dubious.
The PDF itself is signed.
Earlier source site: https://idonutbelieve.com/#third-party-evidence (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47121442)
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