And so it begins. I have a link that is unfortunately not just paywalled, but also in Finnish. I’ll see if I can find better. In the meantime, a kind redditor has provided a partial translation. Looks like our Donut Labs friends have been up to the usual hype games…
An industry insider is accusing Donut Lab of significantly overstating the capabilities of its much-publicized “miracle battery.” Lauri Peltola, a director at one of the company’s partners, claims that key technical promises made by Donut Lab do not hold up in practice and has filed a criminal complaint against the company.
According to Peltola, the discrepancies between what has been marketed and what has actually been delivered are substantial enough to warrant legal action. He alleges that the technology’s performance and readiness have been misrepresented to partners and potentially investors.
Donut Lab’s CEO, Marko Lehtimäki, strongly disputes these claims, stating that the company stands behind its battery technology and that its promises are accurate. The situation now appears to be heading toward a legal process, with conflicting accounts over the validity of the product and the seriousness of the allegations.
This may not be as big a red flag as you think. Patent applications don’t (ordinarily) publish until 18 months after their priority date. So, they may very well have filed a number of patent applications, they just may not have published yet and are therefore undiscoverable at this point. We don’t know.
The Electrek article offers this little tidbit of reasoned skepticism:
Electrek’s Take
I’ve been in and around the EV industry for almost two decades now, and over the course of my time here, I’ve heard many claims about miracle solid state batteries being just around the corner. Most of them I ignore (or think that they’re intentional statements to delay people’s EV-buying purchases by making them think a breakthrough is just around the corner, as Toyota’s many solid state announcements for the last ~15 years have been).
And battery research stories are common, and we rarely cover them, because every week there is some new breakthrough in a lab somewhere, showing that a battery has achieved a number never seen before in some aspect of battery performance.
But to make a real battery and put it in a real vehicle, you need to have a good balance of every aspect of battery performance.
Which brings us back to the beginning of this thread - this statement:
I have no idea whether improvements will come at that “rate of about 5%-10% per year” or have some years of bigger jumps at some point, and if so when. I don’t even have absolute confidence that Donut made knowingly fraudulent claims.
But for anyone in the market for a new vehicle I would strongly advise against holding off and sitting tight simply because something better battery wise may be coming.
Donut Lab was spun off from Verge (motor cycles) to promote the electric hub motor (Donut). The batteries are from Nordic-Nano, using technology from CT-Coating . A Nordic-Nano employee asserts that the Donut claims are over-hyped, and that the previous version of CT-Coating technology couldn’t actually achieve the Nordic-Nano / Donut Lab marketing claims.
Verge and Nordic-Nano don’t have the production capacity to make more than a couple of bikes per month, so the “production date” was always a bit grey. Donut is a marketing company, and may have believed their own hype.
There is a possibility that they are hopeful that, by the time they reach meaningful production, their quality will be good enough, that when viewed through screwed up eyes, in the dusk, with the light behind you, their claims will be defendable, like their existing (London) millage test data.
Donut Lab and Nordic Nano Group are currently investigating the matter together with the legal advisors of both companies. The companies naturally view such matters with extreme seriousness. Any unsubstantiated reports that aim to negatively influence the companies’ business operations and brand are handled with the same rigor.
Sue the naysayers instead of addressing their claims with proof. Standard marketing playbook for scammy businesses.
About once a month I do a 450-mile round-trip, along I-40. My brother does a similar trip, so we have a shared Google Maps folder of “good places to recharge.” There are 2-3 places I regularly stop at, grabbing a sandwich or soda to pass the time.
Definitely not as convenient for these trips as gas is, but charging at home is so much more convenient that it more than evens out.
Oh, I’m happy with the EV, i just feel weird going by my regular gas stations because i reflexively think, “should i fill up? Oops, can’t do that here.”
Anyway back to the OP - so Donut as a specific case seems destined to have been vaporware or mostly so anyway as most suspected … but I’m reading various reports of BYD having the real thing of solid state planned for mass production sometime next year, and making huge advancements in LFP battery capabilities at the same time.
Any good understanding of how close companies outside of China are to catching up and when it is likely that these new technologies will reach the American market? Or are the Chinese company claims overstated?
From my limited knowledge, BYD seems legit (especially compared to Donut). They’re already dominating the EV market in much of the world, and have the scale and government support to continue R&D at a reasonable, realistic pace.
It should be much easier to measure and see their progress with their real vehicles and short release cycles.
AFAIK “catching up” isn’t so much a matter of undiscovered space magic, just investing the slow and steady dollars and manpower into the development — that used to be us, back in Tesla’s early days, but China has far eclipsed us since then. The American market is artificially hindered because both our political parties are deathly afraid of Chinese autos killing Detroit. (And also because they may not pass our safety regulations).
Canada started letting them in recently. Might be worth a drive up just to buy a BYD. I suspect even their current vehicles are far better than anything available in the US, much less their next-gen ones.
If we’re lucky, BYD advances will trickle down into Korea and Japan and we’ll get cars from them that are “only” two or three generations behind the state of the art. But gone are the days when American technology leads the way, as long as we maintain our isolationist protectionism.
Maybe we could recruit some Chinese uni students as triple agents? Give them some more shitty F35 secrets in exchange for battery know-how…
Give them some more shitty F35 secrets in exchange for battery know-how…