Donut Lab’s all-solid-state battery delivers 400 Wh/kg of energy density

https://www.donutlab.com/ces-battery-announcement/

by aeonfox • 7 months ago

276 268 7 months ago

Definitely a "huge if true" headline.

Seems like there's natural skepticism here (https://electrek.co/2026/01/05/verge-unveils-370-mile-electr...), but boy, if it works... Hopefully would be a bellwether for commercial solid-state truly emerging in the next few years.

Fingers crossed this is true.

tedk-42• 7 months ago

I'm very skeptical of any company that just 'pops up' and makes a bunch of claims that will shake up the industry.

I doubt they'd sell to endusers, but not having any partnerships with established brands with sales figures is a big red flag.

No mention of manufacturing capabilities either so I think it's just hype (or worse a rug pull for early investors)

Terr_• 7 months ago

Some poking around suggests it's a subsidiary of "Verge Motorcycles", which are electric and have much more of a web presence.

Animats4• 7 months ago

Agreed. But you can supposedly book a test ride on a Verge motorcycle with this battery.[1] Verge has three stores in California, two of which are in Silicon Valley.

Base price $35,000 with the good battery.

Solid state batteries have been working for a while now, but they're still far too expensive. Mercedes has one demo car. Ducati has one demo motorcycle. Maybe they just decided to accept the high cost and sell a high-end product.

[1] https://www.vergemotorcycles.com/

tyleo• 7 months ago

Yeah, I’m wondering if it could be a Tesla strategy of starting with the something imperfect but niche.

If the product is on the market and you can buy one and walk out the door, I feel like claims can easily be validated or invalidated with a tear down.

Fred27• 7 months ago

I'm not sure the test rides are for the version of the bike with this battery. The bike already exists with a more conventional battery pack.

I've had a brief test ride on a pre-production version of the Verge TS. All seemed OK but I thought the handling seemed weird - maybe due to the rear tyre size and geometry.

notTooFarGone• 7 months ago

Let's wait until Q2 when the first bikes with ssb would roll out

jaggs4• 7 months ago

Um... Did nobody see the Verge motorbike which is now shipping as standard with this battery? And the three companies which are also deploying the new battery tech? If this is a scam, it's definitely a very very sophisticated one.

cloudfudge4• 7 months ago

"Now shipping?" I do not see evidence of that. I am not even convinced the one you can test ride has this battery tech. They announced this same bike at least a year ago with regular LIon batteries.

Electricniko2• 7 months ago

I don't know about a scam, but the EV skateboard they're using has been available for other companies to use for a few years, while the other two companies share the same leadership as Donut/Verge and appear to be founded within the last few months. The battery may be great, but the multiple company launch seems a bit of a marketing gimmick.

jimt12342• 7 months ago

Not necessarily a scam, but it smells like more hype that reality. For example, the web page boasts "2000+ test rides complete", which basically says nothing.

I hope this battery tech and the statements on the web page are true (370-mile range from an electric motorcycle!), but I'm not writing any checks just yet.

stasomatic• 7 months ago

The Verge was discussed at least 2 times, most recently yesterday, on the Wheel Bearings podcast (which I enjoy for the simple motorhead banter). https://overcast.fm/+AA7tJqdxHkE

Robbie from SAE International, who is of the hosts, and an avid motorcyclist, is impressed with the bike and the promise of SSBs. I only ride bicycles, can’t comment on the bike itself, but thought to share and widen their audience. It was kind of a mini shallow yet “deep dive”. It doesn’t seem to be mentioned on their own site for this episode, but the chapter in Overcast is the last one, linking to https://sustainablecareers.sae.org/article/donut-lab-verge-s...

jaggs4• 7 months ago

One thing that most people have missed is that in the Verge small print they discuss the range of the motorbike as being 217 miles for around town driving, which plummets to 127 at 56 mph per hour on the highway. That seems quite a big drop to me, but there again I'm not a battery expert.

nomel• 7 months ago

if you look at the history of the lithium ion battery [1], this is exactly what happened, except from a single man. none of the existing manufacturers could stomach the shift to something new, except for sony, which needed a better battery for their camcorder, eventually resulting in a nobel prize.

[1] https://youtu.be/AGglJehON5g

Aloisius3• 7 months ago

No company involved in lithium ion batteries just popped up out of nowhere.

Whittingham worked for ExxonMobil. Akira Yoshino worked at a joint venture of Toshiba and Asahi Kasei. And Yoshio Nishi worked at Sony.

They were all giant well-established companies.

tckk4• 7 months ago

They didn't just pop up. Oems & their sister company Verge are already using their axial flux motors. And you can order the latest Verge motorcycle with the solid state battery today.

cyberax• 7 months ago

No physical address, no patents, no mentions of independent testing, the whole "drag&drop OS to build EVs".

Totally legit.

Animats4• 7 months ago

You can supposedly go see the bike at the Verge store at Westfield Valley Fair, 2855 Stevens Creek Blvd., Santa Clara, CA 95050-6709. That's a large mall near Apple HQ. Open until 9 PM. Someone in Silicon Valley should stop by on their way home today and take a picture.

You can't just pay $35,000 and ride it away, though. They're just taking pre-orders.

Still, at least you can go kick the tires and make sure it's not just a render on the web site. It's an overly clever design; the rear wheel is hubless.

TheRealPomax• 7 months ago

Pretty sure we established several times over that hubless wheels are a solution in search of a problem - they don't make a bike better, they make it worse in almost every way except looks.

macintux• 7 months ago

Any good way to visually establish whether the battery is solid state, however?

throwaway81523• 7 months ago

take a picture.

I'd want to uninstall the battery, weigh it, and run a capacity test. I doubt that they will let me.

Animats4• 7 months ago

A bit more info:

First, the bike is not new. It's been shipping since 2024, with a conventional battery pack.There are customers and reviews.[1] The "hubless" thing is less hubless than it looks. The rear wheel is the motor, with an outside moving rotor and an inside stator. The stator has a big hole in it. This gives you a large-diameter direct drive motor without dead weight in the center. It also opens up space in the frame to put the battery closer to the ground.

So this is really just an existing bike with a new battery. If they offered a test ride, you'd never know whether it was a solid state battery or not, since that's all about capacity and charging speed.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/first-ride-verge-ts-pro-electric...

ruralfam• 7 months ago

Been following/hoping for the ultimate battery for... a few decades now I think. Donut reads as a home run of sorts. However... during those decades reading about "new tech" that promised great gains, all ended up in the dustbin of history. I really, really hope Donut is for real. Breath. Not. Holding. HTH, RF

ps: Just ordered two new dog collar lights cause the relatively new ones we had fully discharged while the mutts were outside. Now they wont charge. Jesus I hate LiOn.

cloudfudge4• 7 months ago

From the donutlab page:

  > It can be charged to full in just five minutes without limiting charging to 80%, and supports full discharge safely, repeatedly, and reliably.

From the motorcycle youtube video[1]:

  > delivers up to 370 miles (600 km) of range and adds up to 186 miles (300 km) in under 10 minutes

One is claiming 100% in 5 minutes, and the other is claiming ~50% in 10 minutes. Why are their claims so different?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy_mXYItqXU

ZeWaka2• 7 months ago

Temperature thresholds, maybe the bike has active cooling?

cloudfudge4• 7 months ago

Or maybe swags since this is vapor. I look forward to finding out.

notjes• 7 months ago

To charge the average Tesla in 5 minutes you need about 1MW and cables as thick as a forearm.

slaw• 7 months ago

1 MW chargers don't look any bigger than standard chargers.

https://insideevs.com/news/761403/byd-thousands-megawatt-cha...

MBCook• 7 months ago

Don’t bigger batteries allow faster charging because they can absorb current faster?

Perhaps the problem is the size of the battery being limited in a motorcycle.

bee_rider• 7 months ago

The first quote gives it in terms of the capacity, “to full,” and for the second cloudfudge has helpfully computed that for us.

jimt12342• 7 months ago

It could just be me, but that video looks like AI.

tzs2• 7 months ago

One is what the battery is capable of given a favorable environment, the other is what you can get in the environment of that motorcycle?

If might be for example that in the motorcycle the battery or the other components that have to handle the charge current cannot dissipate heat fast enough to allow charging with the maximum current the batter allows. In an EV the pack shape probably has a higher surface area to volume ratio making it cool better, and an EV might also be able to actively cool it.

sroussey4• 7 months ago

Verge motorcycle said they made it longer on purpose... I dunno why. Their larger battery size charges faster. They may have done some stuff to save money on the smaller 10min charging version, and maybe not as much money saving on the larger battery that charges faster.

ZeWaka2• 7 months ago

Some speculation from friends that I was reading is that the battery could be Sodium-based, there's another battery startup in Finland using that same tech.

No spec sheets though.

aappleby• 7 months ago

Sodium ion battery energy density is too low for anything but bulk storage.

jmward012• 7 months ago

BYD would disagree with you [1]. A lot of weight is the packaging. Sodium ion is a lot safer so it generally needs less packaging (at least that is my understanding).

[1] https://thenextavenue.com/2025/07/23/how-byds-sodium-ion-bat...

metalman• 7 months ago

they dont use the word patented, but claim to have engineered the battery but avoid discussing any particulars of chemistry, other than to say it is not lithium, which strongly suggests a silent partner. At 35k for a bike they have to be more forthcoming, though as there are only be so many serious solid state battery developers out there, and even less working on non lithium, someone will put the pieces together quick.

theLegionWithin• 7 months ago

I guess we'll see what happens in ~5 years

Freebytes• 7 months ago

Some models of the motorcycle are available right now and can charge to 80% in 10 minutes and go ~350 miles. Unless it is a scam, and you will not get your motorcycle... However, this seems legitimate.

zdragnar• 7 months ago

The models with the new battery are preorder only, and with a price tag of $35k.

The tech needs to go to another company that can produce something more people are able and willing to buy, and that's going to take a few years before it has a meaningful impact on the market.

p1mrx• 7 months ago

If this is true, it's possible that the technology is from Nordic Nano. That would at least explain how a motor/software company could pull a battery out of thin air:

https://www.donutlab.com/nordic-nano-investment/

Their chief scientist is working on solar-powered hydrogen production, which seems fairly unrelated to solid state batteries:

https://www.nordicnano.co/chief-scientist-bela-bhuskute-will...

Though TiO2 nanoparticles appear to be relevant to battery research in general:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsaem.3c02304

dm8087• 7 months ago

Yes, it is from Nordic Nano.

It is nanoprinted and trivially scalable. Free of lithium, cadmium, lead, and cobalt. Uses abundant raw materials free from geopolitical constraints. https://yle.fi/a/74-20118784

Factory in Finland, started around Q3/2025. https://yle.fi/a/74-20180376

Verge Motorcycles bike with the new battery at CES, apparently at West Hall 5658. Video: https://youtu.be/vmsxYznW9Fs

Donut Lab booth here: https://www.ces.tech/events/ces-unveiled-las-vegas/exhibitor...

anttisalmela• 7 months ago

The company aims to have the pre-production equipment needed to manufacture prototypes operational by the end of this (2025) year. Actual production is scheduled to begin in late summer 2026.

Well, maybe there's enough prototype production for motor cycles.

dust427• 7 months ago

It is nanoprinted and trivially scalable.

Nanoprinted snakeoil - infinitely scalable. Good enough to grab 3M€ public grants and some more from gullible private investors.

Honestly, if they had the tiniest proof of their claims (400Wh/kg, 5min 0-100%, operating temp -30°C to 100°C, no Li/Co/Mn and somebody looking at the production and taking the output to the test) they would be absolutely drowned in money to the point that sama would become jealous.

Factory in Finland, started around Q3/2025. https://yle.fi/a/74-20180376

That is only a picture of a factory building. They are 100% greenwash grant grabbers with no real substance. There are plenty of these people in Europe. The motorcycle is likely in China designed and produced.

If grant grabbing is what you'd consider a fulfilling life, then come to Europe - it will be an El Dorado for you.

Animats4• 7 months ago

The Nordic Nano connection is strange. Here's their web site.[1] They claim to make solar panel coatings, solid state batteries, and do something involving hydrogen. This is all done from a little metal building in a small town on the east coast of Finland near the Russian border. There's no detail on any of this technology.

One Youtuber thinks this is a capacitor, not a battery. But that would require a dielectric orders of magnitude better than anything known.

Donut won't talk about either the chemistry or the manufacturing. The only thing they showed at CES was one pouch cell hooked up to a charger at 4.2V, drawing current. Everything else was a 3D printed mockup or an existing electric motorcycle.

[1] https://www.nordicnano.co/

twnaing• 6 months ago

Lehtimaki even serves as a board member at Nordic Nano, but says that’s not the source of this product. “It’s not from them,” he says.

- [Is this the world’s first solid-state battery? - The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/transportation/858514/is-this-the-w...)

Jommi3• 7 months ago

They had a presentation with data also few months ago https://spacefinland.fi/documents/60305973/246671122/Kaisa_A...

dm8087• 7 months ago

More details:

https://x.com/VoltaWagen/status/2008620031450706132?s=20

https://x.com/VoltaWagen/status/2008620565704438239?s=20

https://x.com/VoltaWagen/status/2008617905362018630?s=20

https://x.com/VoltaWagen/status/2008625662480068957?s=20

Jommi3• 7 months ago

thats AI generated, please flag it

veb• 7 months ago

Some more info I noticed over on X which might shed some more light: https://x.com/shortl2021/status/2008554842332225705

_carbyau_4• 7 months ago

Seems vaporware at the moment.

But has anyone else had thoughts on how solid "solid state" batteries are?

IE could the frame of my next motorbike be made from solid state batteries?

viraptor• 7 months ago

In theory. There's a few "car frame made of solid state batteries" idea explorations on YouTube. Of course someone actually has to make it. And ensure you don't electrocute the emergency personnel touching the car, after you get into a crash.

stevage2• 7 months ago

With Verge Motorcycles bikes now using the company’s solid state battery technology in vehicles out on the road in use in Q1

Claiming that a technology is shipping imminently doesn't fit the normal definition of vapourware.

_carbyau_4• 7 months ago

Has it shipped? Has it been reviewed? Has it been verified in any way? So it is vapourware, at the moment.

In the next moment some source of verification could appear, which is fine, then it wouldn't be vapourware. But as of commenting - as of the moment - this is the state of affairs.

recursive• 7 months ago

All claims fit the definition of vaporware until and unless it's actually shipping to real customers.

Qwertious• 7 months ago

Solid doesn't mean structural strength. Uncompacted snowflakes are solid, nobody builds things with them (igloos etc are compacted or ice).

_carbyau_4• 7 months ago

Curiously, anyone doubting the veracity of the claims has been voted down.

If anything, this makes me more cynical that this is a marketing exercise on something that continues to be vapourware until independently verified.

If anyone wants to show/link to an independent verification, feel free!

tckk4• 7 months ago

What would be the point of lying about something easily verifyable that you are shipping in the next few months?

bigwheels2• 7 months ago

[flagged]

sfink2• 7 months ago

Based wholly on the claims in the article:

[x] it is impractical to manufacture at scale.

[?] it will be too expensive for users.

(Cost unknown, but it's part of a $35K motorcycle, which somewhat limits the possible range unless there's VC chum involved.)

[x] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.

[x] it is incapable of delivering current at sufficient levels.

(Motorcycle, again.)

[x] it lacks thermal stability at low or high temperatures.

[x] it lacks the energy density to make it sufficiently portable.

(400 Wh/kg is better than Li-Ion)

[x] it has too short of a lifetime.

[x] its charge rate is too slow.

[x] its materials are too toxic.

[x] it is too likely to catch fire or explode.

[x] it is too minimal of a step forward for anybody to care.

[x] this was already done 20 years ago and didn't work then.

[x] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it.

(not directly addressed, but in combination with the rest, I'll give this a pass.)

[?] your claims are lies.

It kinda looks like they read through this exact list and addressed every item but the last. Where by "addressed", I mean simply that: they made a claim regarding the item.

akoboldfrying• 7 months ago

[x] it suffers from too few recharge cycles.

100000 recharge cycles is "too few"?

Or are you using "x" to mean "this claim is rejected"? If so, on what grounds do you assert "[x] by this time it ships li-ion advances will match it"?

tomhow• 7 months ago

Please don't post curmudgeonly, sneering comments or shallow dismissals on HN. We're here for curious conversation that engages with the content of the article, not reflexive, blanket dismissals based on stereotypes.

Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

bigwheels2• 7 months ago

Sorry Tom, that wasn't my intention at all. I read the article and it hit on a few, perhaps I should have elaborated more on that. Thank you!

1970-01-012• 7 months ago

You didn't check any of the boxes.. Finally we run out of excuses?

jmward012• 7 months ago

Extraordinary claims come up all the time in the battery world. The thing is though with so many claims popping up all the time a few actually turn out to be true on a pretty regular basis. We will see if this is among them! At the pace battery technology is advancing I can almost believe this isn't actually that bold of a claim actually.

nubinetwork• 7 months ago

What exactly makes them solid state? If they mean no water, wouldn't that make all li-ion batteries solid state when compared to lead acid batteries?

Tuna-Fish• 7 months ago

Normal lithium-ion batteries have a liquid electrolyte. It's not water, but some carbohydrate. During draining and charging, ions travel between the electrodes through the electrolyte.

nine_k6• 7 months ago

Donut Lab’s all-solid-state battery delivers 400 Wh/kg of energy density

This is damn impressive. I suppose all the makers of military drones are lining up at the factory already. I mean, electric bikes are fine, but who has the most burning need to increase range and payload?..

trhway• 7 months ago

i don't see them mentioning of price and C-rating. Suppose their C-rating is sufficient. Current widely available cheap batteries are almost 300Wh/kg. So, on a 3 kg drone with up to 3 kg payload (say RPG-7 single shaped charge warhead) with say 30 min flight time the new battery will give you 10 min additional flight time. At what price? If the price results in having only one 40 min drone instead of 2 30 min drones, then in the current war, only say 10% drones would need to be with new batteries, while it would be most effective to have the rest with the old batteries as the current war seems to be about horizontal scaling.

Overall - their page sounds like a revolution in battery industry as they hit all the points - durability, capacity/weight, fast charging, etc. It is like Musk should just close his GigaFactory. I mean, i would like such a revolutionary development as in particular it would mean we'll soon get personal VTOLs (where price aspect is less important than in the case of drones mentioned above) ...

rubyn00bie• 7 months ago

Yeah, I was noticing that too. There is a company out there, Amprius, which has validated their silicon anode lithium ion batteries that can discharge at 10C (or 20C pulses), have varying densities from ~345wh/kg to 450wh/kg, and are shipping them to customers for drones and VTOLs.

I think until we have an independent lab verify the results, it's pretty much impossible to say if their (Donut Labs) claims are true or not. The only thing I'm particularly suspicious of is that they claim their battery was verified but didn't say by who or provide a whitepaper on it. Both of those seem to be the bare minimum for most battery manufacturers, and with their extraordinary claims I'd assume they'd have them front and center.

nine_k6• 7 months ago

I agree, but I suppose most batteries in circulation at the front lines are not fresh, and likely have 75%-90% of the original capacity after intense discharge-charge cycles multiple times a day. If his battery does not deteriorate as quickly, it may be worth the price, for non-kamikaze-type drones. Not a shaped charge and ramming into armor, but a mortar round dropped from 300-500m, undetected. There is a ton of videos on YouTube with footage from such bomber drones.

10 extra minutes may mean extra 5 kilometers of range, or of a patrol / recon route.

thrwwXZTYE2• 7 months ago

Also you really don't need 1000s of cycles in military drones, so maybe some more "crazy" chemistries can be used.

If the drone can fly 10 times it's probably good enough.

nine_k6• 7 months ago

It depends; not all drones are kamikaze-type. Great many drones are used for delivery (food, ammo, medkits), for reconnaissance, as carriers of smaller drones, and as radio retransmitters. Bomber drones also fly a large number of sorties before getting shot down or breaking down from wear.

Ground teams usually have a bunch of batteries for quick replacement, because charging is slow. With these fast-charging batteries, they may need to lug fewer batteries, and larger generators.

tckk4• 7 months ago

You can already buy Amprius's silicon anode cells at over 400wh/kg.. but they have low cycle life.

Klaster_1• 7 months ago

This could arguably be a huge contribution by EU to Ukrainian war aid, given the batteries are manufactured in Finland.

dm8087• 7 months ago

The same technology for defence purposes is available from here: https://esoxgroup.com/

rocqua• 7 months ago

Sorry to hijavk, but why are drones still on electric power? I'd expect some kind of air breathing engine to be manufacturable at low cost if it only has to function for a single flight. Especially for interceptor drones the speed is valuable. But for all types of drones the extra range is also highly valuable.

jjcm• 7 months ago

One of the things I haven't seen discussed yet in the comments is this claim:

Clay-like design freedom

They're claiming this not only can fit custom geometries, but can be part of the structure itself. Would love to see what they're building this out of. I expect we'll see some people dissecting the verve cycle batteries soon enough.

tw04• 7 months ago

I don’t see any mention of clay in the article, just this:

It can be produced in custom sizes, voltages, and geometries, enabling structural integration and non-traditional formats like serving as the body of a drone or a vehicle chassis.

Battery packs are part of the structure of basically all EVs. That’s not really something new or unique.

taneq2• 7 months ago

Yeah but they’re usually a rectangular prism, more or less.

calmbonsai5• 7 months ago

The real issue with "clay-like design freedom" is the collective knock-on effects of thermal and conductive inefficiencies.

We've had "clay-like design freedom" since the early days of carbon-zinc batteries, but it turns out that it's far better (both for manufacturing, chemistry, and safety) to have a continuous volume of relative thermal and electrolytic quiescence that's, largely, isolated from physical strains.

That this is even being highlighted as a "feature" makes other claims even more dubious.

Suffice to say that any battery ("electrolytic cell") that's undergoing dynamic strains will have vastly different levels of conductivity (hence power output and contribution to thermal load) than one that is geometrically static.

Put another way, the performance gains from utilizing the motor as a "stressed member" (akin to F1 monocoque) in combustion vehicles was only possible circa 50+ years after the invention of the 4-stroke cycle. Talk to me in ~20 years.

FWIW, my degree is in electrical engineering and I worked on our college's solar car back when "solar car racing" was "a thing".

You do not want the stressed members of any structure being a salient contributor to its power-train. Not related, see mammalian, reptile, fish, and insect physiologies.

CastIron8884• 7 months ago

The Fordson tractor of 1917 appears to use the engine block and transmission case as basic structural members of the tractor.

Not a fast vehicle, but tough.

schmidp• 7 months ago

ducatis use the engine block has the frame.

driverdan• 7 months ago

That's only good if they can maintain easy repairability. We don't need more expensive disposable electronics.

cm2012• 7 months ago

If true, would have massive geopolitical implications.

1) China has gone all in on batteries. A competitor from Finland would be shocking. Scale is the real issue.

2) Luckily Finland hates Russia so this probably can't be used for Russian drones

cogman10• 7 months ago

Nah.

Being able to scale out is far more important than the underlying tech ultimately. I'd expect that China would pretty quickly copy this if it proves out and would likely start outstripping them.

amarant2• 7 months ago

I don't really see why Finland would be unable to scale production though? Expensive workforce? Surely that could be worked around, Sweden still produces semis and have similarly costly workforce. What other impediments do they even face?

Aloisius3• 7 months ago

Eh. There are at least a half dozen other companies with working solid state batteries outside China like Rimac in Estonia (with ProLogium in Taiwan and Mitsubishi), Solid Power in Colorado (with Samsung SDI) and QuantumScape in California (with VW's PowerCo SE).

Mass manufacturing them is the big issue.

Jommi3• 7 months ago

Rimac in Croatia!

Alex20373• 7 months ago

no one hates Kyrgyzstan though ;)

https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5622AQHRq_efww0ZsQ/feedsh...

regardless, batteries with 10% more wh/kg @ 500% the cost would be used for preciously few things, if any. after a few years of war, Russia had the presence of mind to revert to "quantity has a quality all its own" doctrine.

mrtksn2• 7 months ago

I hope the tech works as advertısed because Finland is screwed due to the state of affairs with Russia. Not just militarily but economically, they have some of the worst unemployment rates in EU now and they are trying to figure out new economy without reliance on the trade with Russia, especially on the border regions.

stevage2• 7 months ago

Interesting - Donut apparently also manufactures innovative motors.

dzonga• 7 months ago

if this is production ready right now - can't wait to see what CATL and BYD bring to market this year

cz 100k cycles is impressive

1970-01-012• 7 months ago

So solid state battery tech is very likely on-schedule for mass production over the next 4 years. There really isn't much time left for the haters to post stories attempting to factually dismantle and dismiss EVs before EVs pass the 51% adoption curve in 2030.

xbmcuser2• 7 months ago

For me current battery tech is already good enough for passenger ev they cant even use the full charging speed capacity or the charge discharge cycles. Solid state batteries might be useful for heavy duty trucking or aeroplanes/drones

wat100002• 7 months ago

Cost, volume, and weight are still significant constraints. Existing batteries obviously can make for some good cars, but they could be better. It doesn’t have to be more range or faster charging, it could be the same range and charging speed but 25% lighter and cheaper.

givemeethekeys• 7 months ago

I will wait until the reviews and 3rd party lab tests come out before getting excited.

cosmic_cheese8• 7 months ago

Even as things currently stand, some folks just have a bone to pick with EVs. Even if future models have an 800mi range, can charge to 100% in 5 minutes, and have useful lifetimes as long or longer than ICE counterparts, some will figure out some reason to get angry about them.

senordevnyc• 7 months ago

It's fine, those folks can just get angrier and angrier as the market makes their ICE cars more and more difficult and expensive to own.

ninkendo6• 7 months ago

It’s range anxiety and it’s real. And it’s not entirely unjustified. Where I live in the Midwest I have literally never seen a public charging station. I know they exist because I can search for them on maps app and I see dots, but it speaks to their general small numbers that I’ve never seen one in person that I can remember.

Now, prior to this, I lived in California for many years from 2011 until 2019, and I saw tons of EV charging stations there. I left with the impression of “wow, charging stations are everywhere”, and that was 7 years ago.

But now in my Midwest metro area, I can honestly say there are zero that I can think of within a 10 mile radius of my house. Not one. (They’re out there somewhere, but they gotta be tucked away because I never notice them enough to remember them.)

It’s no small wonder that all my friends from California drive electric cars, and all my friends from this area (near my childhood home, so I know lots of people) think EV owners are crazy. [0]

If EV charging stations were visibly everywhere and charged in 5 minutes I could say without a doubt that every one of them would be swayed. So I don’t think they’re being irrational at all.

- [0] It is common to go on long road trips here, since the weather sucks, and people really don’t want to rent a car to do it. Plus a ton of people tow shit. Half my friends have campers and the other half have boats.

JuniperMesos• 7 months ago

A person I know is upset about EVs because they are built around the assumption that every system in the car will phone home to the car manufacturer (or perhaps the cops), and basically require you to have a proprietary smartphone app in order to interact with EV chargers and perhaps the car itself. Of course, this is also true of new ICE cars, but it's at least possible to continue driving an older ICE car with more limited telemetry, whereas effective, mass-available EVs basically came onto to the scene at the same time that spyware car computer systems did.

I personally do want an EV, but I have qualms about the smartphone-ification of such cars as well. More importantly, the place where I currently live doesn't have a parking spot with an EV charger (there's a limited number of such spots, you have to join a waitlist to get one). If electric cars really could be charged to be ready to drive 800 miles in 5 minutes, that wouldn't be a problem - but even if this press release is being more or less accurate about the battery claims, I can't buy an EV with this technology today, and as far as I'm aware it still takes significantly longer to charge an EV than to fill up with gas to an equivalent amount.

VladVladikoff• 7 months ago

If you live in the north, lithium ion batteries are not a great bet for longevity of a vehicle. There are legitimate reasons to not be pro EV in their current form.

gilbetron• 7 months ago

I emphasize, somewhat, with them for some complaints. The thing I love about our EV is the greatly reduced maintenance. No oil changes, no transmission fluid changes, greatly less parts means less that can fail, etc. That's awesome, but it also means people in industries supporting those will see their industries reduce or go away. This is good for us overall, but is painful for those in the midst.

That's why there is a big backlash against EVs, and I get it. Long term progress means short/medium term pain for some people. Think about all the stress facing software developers with AI progress.

Some empathy and plan to handle these changes would go a long way.

testing223217• 7 months ago

Can’t roll coal, no rumble, too hard to self repair, not “old school”, rely on foreign Mumbai jumbo, etc etc

The list is endless

techsystems• 7 months ago

Samsung originally scheduled production next year, but apparently it will be this year, ahead of schedule, and apparently winning the race.

exhilaration• 7 months ago

They're behind, Toyota announced in 2017 that they would begin solid state battery production in 2022: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1111717_2022-toyota-ele...

I would take solid state battery announcements with a large grain of salt.

mattmaroon• 7 months ago

I’ll take the under on that.

newyankee• 7 months ago

That is true even if you take LFP for China, Global South & lower range urban vehicles and LMFP or High nickel Lithium ion batteries into consideration in a place where rational thinking persists.

Solid state if it works at scale at right price might give the killer blow as the no of excuses will shrink even further

tonyhart72• 7 months ago

what about the price tho ??? I think the biggest hurdle for EV is in need for cheaper battery tech

tckk4• 7 months ago

Donut claim their price is lower than current lithium ion cells.

kevinsync• 7 months ago

The press release says they're demonstrating this at CES 2026, which starts tomorrow (Jan 6, 2026) so I imagine we'll have some kind of verification one way or the other..

Or maybe CES is already happening?? [0]

[0] https://www.cnet.com/home/electric-vehicles/donut-lab-produc...

sroussey4• 7 months ago

Their promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-aPS2AwMbc

dm8087• 7 months ago

Video from CES 2026 available: https://youtu.be/vmsxYznW9Fs

scythe• 7 months ago

There's no mention of the underlying cell chemistry on the landing page or under the "battery" tab, and only three people listed under the "About Us" of which the only one who sounds remotely technical is Ville Piippo, so I punched him into Google Scholar and found this:

https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/items/a9608639-3897-4878-979b-0d95...

If this guy has developed a revolutionary new battery cell then he has really learned a lot in ten years.

So we have no chemistry and no researchers but this startup claims to have blown everyone else out of the water. We'll see, I guess.

ex-aws-dude• 7 months ago

I don’t understand, why would this debut only in a motorcycle?

Wouldn’t there be a much bigger market and investor interest in putting it in a car initially?

john01dav• 7 months ago

A guess: existing charging infrastructure is too slow/low power to charge this fast enough to be useful over currently standard batteries for car sized batteries

sneak• 7 months ago

I would assume it’s a capacity/scaling thing, plus bizdev. Car companies source things on much longer timescales and build many many more units.

markbao• 7 months ago

+1. There’s also more upstart motorcycle makers than car makers willing to take a bet on new tech. Plus the difficulty of scaling manufacturing to serve much larger capacity car batteries.

Gibbon1• 7 months ago

When I've looked at the power and energy requirements of vehicles it seems to follow some sort of log(size) law when it comes to speed and energy per mass distance. But not for acceleration which is linear.

What that means is a small vehicle like a motorcycle needs more energy and hp per lb than a car to have the same range.

So could see higher performance batteries being very useful for motorcycles. Have heard noises that electric motorcycles and bicycles are heavy feeling. So lighter probably would be considered better.

mrtksn2• 7 months ago

It can be many things, like large car companies staying away from unproven tech or them demanding production capacities too large to gamble with brand new tech.

This niche motorcycle brand has already established business relationships with Donut Lab, they were using Donut Lab's electric motors. Probably the Donut people easily worked out a release pipeline together in a bar or something, which would have taken years with VW.

rootusrootus13• 7 months ago

This niche motorcycle brand has already established business relationships with Donut Lab

Yeah, they are the same company basically.

inemesitaffia• 7 months ago

Owners are the same

Workaccount25• 7 months ago

This is so out of left field and so "ideal" that it warrants some pretty heavy skepticism. Donut isn't even a battery company, and plenty of other battery companies with lots of knowledge and lots more money have been pouring over this problem with mixed results.

Because of this, now I am even a bit skeptical of their electric motor claims, which before I didn't really question much at all.

ineedasername• 7 months ago

They’re making very direct, no caveat statements though, using words like “now”, “immediately”, and “in production”. So if it’s a bluff, they haven’t left themselves much wiggle room with weasel words. I don’t see any wiggle room. And if that’s that case then a failure to deliver would be have to be more “wow, yeah, turns out forgot a decimal point and messed up some imperial-metric confusion”. Or “my teenager kid found the blog unlocked and thought it would be awesome no-press-is-bad-press PR stunt. Sorry”

donny2018• 7 months ago

This, and apparently they don’t have a track record of producing bluffware before. They already have some interesting know-how heavy products, and previously they have fully delivered on them.

greenavocado• 7 months ago

Way too good to be true

bawolff2• 7 months ago

So, cheaper, higher density, no difficult to acquire elements needed, works in -30 weather, does not degrade over time, and safer. Basically a magic battery that is better on every possible metric. This could be world changing.

Either they are lying about something, or they are about to be the richest company on the planet out of nowhere.

aetherspawn• 7 months ago

Solid state batteries already exist, but they’re unreliable. A few bus companies have been messing around with them over the last few years, even putting them on public roads. One had a huge recall when they started delaminating after a year or so.

They are not as safe, light or as good as advertised. Yet.

After delaminating, some caught fire.

Most wet chemistries (LFP) are safer than current dry chemistries.

Donut claim they have GWhr manufacturing capability. The way they claim that feels very third-person.

That being the case, chances are they just white-labelled someone else’s cell technology and packaged the cells in a box (this is super common, virtually every company in eMobility does this with CATL/LG/Sony cells).

Technically it’s a battery made by Donut, yes, but in that case Donut don’t have the valuable IP so don’t be so quick to jump to buy shares or whatever. Making a battery box is fairly easy.

Workaccount25• 7 months ago

It would be embarrassing if they jumped the gun with promises from a Chinese oem who was also just white labeling some other Chinese battery. Or giving engineering samples to Donut from a process with a 1% yield hoping they can figure it out in time.

To put in HN terms, if someone sold you a 20TB SDcard knowing your R/W speeds are limited to 100kbps, it's going to take you a while to confirm that the card is actually 20TB. Rough analogy, but there are similar ways you can hide true battery performance.

It's just extremely suspect that a company full of mechanical and electrical engineers, who made (supposed) blow out gains in electrical motors this year, also found the holy grail of (battery) chemical engineering too.

chrisbrandow• 7 months ago

Hopefully this shakes out better than eestor… iykyk

sheepscreek• 7 months ago

This is so out there, checks every box imaginable or they’ve done some incredible copy writing.

So then, elephant in the room, where is the catch? It’s it the cost? They haven’t left much else -

  - made from geopolitically abundant resources
  - unlikely to catch fire
  - fully charges in 5 mins
  - does not lose capacity over cycles
  - retains 99% capacity at -30C and 100C

What is today, April 1st??

tonyhart72• 7 months ago

oh yes the good old of pick two from good,cheap,fast

bawolff2• 7 months ago

[Is] it the cost?

The press release also claims:

"and demonstrates a lower cost than lithium-ion."

impossiblefork2• 7 months ago

For me the reason I might trust it to some degree is that they're Finns (and Finns don't usually hype things or bullshit), and it's not just one firm. They've got the motorcycle firm (Verge) in the video, they've got the some other guy, so if these guys just went along with bullshit claims they're kind of ruining the image of their company for no reason.

I don't understand how it can be done though.

rootusrootus13• 7 months ago

They've got the motorcycle firm (Verge) in the video

FWIW, they are basically the same company. It is good that there were other cameos from independent customers, though, to help add some possible credibility.

karmakurtisaani• 7 months ago

One reason to trust this to some extent is that many car manufacturers are pushing onwards with their solid state battery tech. Youtube channel Just have a think made a video recently on the state of this tech and it does look promising.

dust427• 7 months ago

Sounds too good to be true. Seriously, if the CEO had any proof, he wouldn't need to hang out on CES. He would be showered with billions of $$$ and investors would fly in from all over the world. Instead he is selling motor cycles? Hard to believe. Why not have at least two different top universities having tested them?At least some insights into their production to verify the claims? And the motorcycle has a 33kWh battery for 600km? At what speed, 40kph? Good luck to them anyway...

jacobgorm• 7 months ago

Apparently Nordic Nano is a spin out from the University of Tampere, and the CEO of Donut Labs seems to have his own money. I happened to spend three weeks in Tampere by accident 15 years ago, and I have no reason to believe that people there don’t know what they are doing. It is where Nokia was originally founded, and where the first GSM phone call was made.

dust427• 7 months ago

Actually you are right. The world first super-intelligence AI was also created there, just 7 months ago. Also by Marko. This man is from another world.

Watch yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilgJKjiDLV8

PoignardAzur• 7 months ago

I was extremely skeptical, until I saw that they're shipping in an actual consumer motorcycle.

https://www.vergemotorcycles.com/ts-pro/

The webpage does mention the solid-state battery, and the starting price is 30'000$, so... holy shit?

chrsw2• 7 months ago

I was thinking “this is vapor or extremely expensive” . But maybe it’s somehow both.

burnt-resistor• 7 months ago

Meanwhile, CATL's Naxtra sodium-ion batteries while only 175 Wh/kg are far safer.

Lithium-ion NMC/Lipo and even LFP are gradually becoming like whale oil lamps and wax candles, inherently unsafe tech to be replaced gradually by safer and more durable tech.

deflator• 7 months ago

Very cool even if its 25% sizzle on top of the true numbers This is why I lease EVs, not buy. My 2024 Mustang Mach E's pack is less than half that in density.

asdgfaqwrg• 7 months ago

Jif creamy peanut butter comes in at 190 kcal per 33 g serving [0], and 2000 kcal is 2.32 kW-h. Doing some good old fashioned dimensional analysis, the energy density of store-bought PB is

  190 kcal |   2.32 kw | 1000 g
  ---------+-----------+------- = 6.68 kW-h/kg
      33 g | 2000 kcal | kg

So, Jif creamy is nearly 17 times as energy dense as Donut's battery. Even so, crunchy is better.

---

[0] https://www.jif.com/products/creamy/creamy-peanut-butter

BobaFloutist• 7 months ago

Right, but a jar of peanut butter is more comparable to a gas can than to a solid-stste battery. I'm sure if you measured 100% of the kcal comprising the battery in a bomb calorimeter, the source of measurements of the kcal of food, you'd end up with a significantly higher density - but wholesale combustion is the paradigm we're trying to move past, not towards.

rootusrootus13• 7 months ago

Could you re-state those numbers but use delivered power instead of hypothetical? Assuming you can get the peanut butter to combust, I mean.

stock_toaster• 7 months ago

_IF_ true, this seems like it would also be a big deal for both electrical grid infrastructure (load smoothing), and laptops.

alex_duf• 7 months ago

For grid storage the only two things that matter are cost and reliability. So it would be a big deal, but it's not the public for whom it would be the biggest deal.

I think light aircraft doing short flights might be pretty interested by the technology. I remember 400 Wh being a threshold above which flights become feasible.

OdisUlises2• 7 months ago

I am confused... Why this so called Solid State Battery with 20.2 kWh can only achieve 350 km, while current battery that is used in "Charged Rimau" ( an electric motorcycle that is used in Indonesia) can achieve 200 km with only 5.4 kWh??? I expected more from a 20.2 kWh SSB, perhaps no less than 1500 km... Maybe someone here can explain why?

OdisUlises2• 7 months ago

Or maybe they should more emphasis about the weight of the battery. I mean, instead of saying "Our 20.2 kWh battery pack delivers 350 km of range...", maybe "Our 20.2 kWh battery pack only weighs 50.5 kg and delivers 350 km of range, which is very difficult to achieve with current usual lithium batteries, because it will weigh around 100 kg and consumes larger space..." will be more understandable.

vvs1947• 7 months ago

Стартап заявляет о промышленной твердотельной батарее? Бред полный.

pyaamb• 7 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsi-TS8PX7U

oco101• 7 months ago

I mean, I have no idea what the point of this is, but I’d give it a 99.9% probability that this is some kind of joke, scam, publicity stunt, or social experiment. There’s just no way that anyone in the world could come up with such spectacular tech and nobody has ever heard about it. Let alone a 22-person company that not only claims to have developed the most advanced, production-ready battery in the world, but also plans to scale a battery factory to the size of Tesla’s Gigafactory within a year. But hey, maybe that’s possible, because the CEO is “a serial entrepreneur with a proven track record.” If you're curious here are all the details about the team behind this : https://www.donutlab.com/about-us/

CyanLite2• 7 months ago

It's a capacitor, not a battery.

hackernews_7364• 7 months ago

This is a fraud.

The magnitude of their unsupported claims is a good indication but I suggest checking out their LinkedIn. They employ a handful of people none of them with a chemistry background, most of them don't have an engineering/science background at all.

The final data point: here's the CEO of Donut Lab also announcing "The World's First True Artificial Superintelligence" in a company where supposedly he is the chairman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilgJKjiDLV8 (for contrast here's Donut Lab's video announcement of the SSB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-aPS2AwMbc).

Donut Lab’s all-solid-state battery delivers 400 Wh/kg of energy density

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