Donut Lab announces solid state battery in production

[JohanH]

Interesting times. A Finnish company claims they have a working solid state battery in production.

At CES 2026, Donut Lab announced the launch of its all-solid-state "Donut Battery," which it claims is the world's first production-ready solid-state battery for immediate OEM use.

Charging: Full charge (0–100%) in just 5 minutes.
Energy Density: 400 Wh/kg
Longevity: Rated for up to 100,000 charge cycles with minimal capacity fade.
Safety: No flammable liquid, no thermal runaway or metallic dendrites.
Extreme Temperatures: Maintains over 99% capacity in temperatures ranging from –30°C to over 100°C.
Sustainability: Manufactured using abundant, affordable, and geopolitically safe materials without rare earth elements.

It's entering the market in Q1 2026 and will be used in Verge motorcycles. Donut Lab is also partnering with WATTEV for a modular electric platform, Ahola Group for smart freight trailers, and ESOX Group for defense-grade applications.

Source:
https://www.donutlab.com/ces-battery-announcement/
https://interestingengineering.com/ces-2026/donut-lab-solid-state-battery-oem-verge-motorcycles

[JohanH]

So far there are no details about battery chemistry etc. It's likely that the chemistry is coming from Nordic Nano Group (https://www.nordicnano.co) that Donut Lab has invested in. They have expertise in nanocarbon materials, such as graphene-style structures.

[Siwastaja]

Claims seem too good to be true, especially 100000-cycle life.  We have seen this too many times. 0.1% chances it's real this time. The whole thing screams "scam" all over it, like they put unrealistic combination of overall goodness on all metrics.

And yet, sometimes breakthroughs actually happen.

Fortunately, since they claim it's already in production, we will know soon. If it's true, they will be able to sell them to everyone and ramp up production aggressively. Since they claim it's already sold for companies that sell actual non-vaporware e-motorbikes, now obviously very soon someone will get those cells in their hands and test them independently. 

[Marco]

If it's a scam they don't have much potential for profit, just the downpayments for the pre-orders of the Verge TS Pro for a couple months. Peanuts.

Then again, ponzi scams get increasingly exhuberant towards their end.

[rteodor]

Not a single word about price. And by the markets they address I understand: expensive and lacks production volume.

10e5 cycles is truly impressive: two full charges per day would keep it running for an eye poping duration of 136 years. That would be the first real competition to CHEAP energy storage if the cells last that long without chemically breaking down. Not a word about that longevity either.

Also in the article I could only see the battery offered together with or included within another product. That's a very big red alarm.

[Marco]

Also aircooled AFAICS, at upto 12C. To add to the unbelievable specs.

[shapirus]

Any word on the working voltage range?

[Marco]

Also in the article I could only see the battery offered together with or included within another product. That's a very big red alarm.

All the new Verge TS Pro electric motorcycles, but still it's safer to assume the last legs of a local Ponzi.

[Siwastaja]

Generally, cases like this are one of the following categories:

1 Outright scams - either nothing exists at all, or some primitive "R&D" (orders of magnitude under-resourced) acts as a facade (think uBeam and similar)
2 Real company, real product, with some real use cases or development potential, with marketing department gone haywire making absurdly exaggerated promises
3 True breakthrough

Chances of it being a true breakthrough are extremely slim. Simply, billions and billions of R&D money have been poured all around the world to solve all of the problems this company now suddenly, out of nowhere, with relatively small budget, claims to solve all at once. Something like that simply just doesn't happen. I would be very happy to be wrong, but it's so improbable that it's not IMHO interesting to speculate about.

However, what is interesting to speculate is if this is case #1 or #2. Both are very real possibilities, and it would be so nice if it was #2 instead of #1.

[JohanH]

Generally, cases like this are one of the following categories:

1 Outright scams - either nothing exists at all, or some primitive "R&D" (orders of magnitude under-resourced) acts as a facade (think uBeam and similar)
2 Real company, real product, with some real use cases or development potential, with marketing department gone haywire making absurdly exaggerated promises
3 True breakthrough

Chances of it being a true breakthrough are extremely slim. Simply, billions and billions of R&D money have been poured all around the world to solve all of the problems this company now suddenly, out of nowhere, with relatively small budget, claims to solve all at once. Something like that simply just doesn't happen. I would be very happy to be wrong, but it's so improbable that it's not IMHO interesting to speculate about.

However, what is interesting to speculate is if this is case #1 or #2. Both are very real possibilities, and it would be so nice if it was #2 instead of #1.

Absolutely agree.

There's a slim chance that they somehow have found a breakthrough in graphene production.

[Bud]

The CEO guy is a serial enterpreneur and a cofounder of all or almost  all those "partnership" companies mentioned in the announcement. How convenient. I lost count of how many companies he created over the last 5 years. Check out his LinkedIn  profile here https://www.linkedin.com/in/youngkasi/details/experience

[JohanH]

The CEO guy is a serial enterpreneur and a cofounder of all or almost  all those "partnership" companies mentioned in the announcement. How convenient. I lost count of how many companies he created over the last 5 years. Check out his LinkedIn  profile here https://www.linkedin.com/in/youngkasi/details/experience

Donut Lab seems to be a spin-off of Verge Motorcycles. They spun off their tech development, that's not suspicious.

In Nordic Nano, the Donut Lab CEO has taken a board seat and made a strategic investment, not a co-founder.

Other companies mentioned in the recent articles where they are partnering or collaborating, the CEO is definitely not a co-founder, e.g. Ahola Group (large and well-known), WATTEV, ESOX Group.

What can be noted about Donut Lab is that there is a respectable investor and board member Risto Siilasmaa - very known figure in Finnish tech from Nokia times:
https://www.sttinfo.fi/tiedote/70929863/donut-lab-developer-of-the-worlds-most-efficient-electric-motor-is-setting-its-sights-on-the-next-phase-of-growth-while-welcoming-former-nokia-chairman-and-founder-of-f-secure-and-withsecure-risto-siilasmaa-to-its-board

That last thing at least says that they are not a scam company. It doesn't validate their product claim about the solid-state battery, though.

[sanleontexas]

Godfrey Daniel, is it April already?

[Bud]

Theranos had many respectable investors. As well as random people on the board.

[mikeselectricstuff]

What makes it more suspect is that it's not just about the battery - I watched  a few of their vids - they claim to have solutions for everything in the EV space- battery, motor, software OS etc., and a modular integrated system to build any type of EV drivetrain with a few clicks. Amusingly, the demo of their modular OS included options for ATMEGA328 and ESP32... Arduino for Automotive..?

They have a motor they're pushing as a in in-wheel drive solution, but failing to address issues of unsprung mass, dealing with electrical and cooling feeds across a moving suspension. (Do they have potholes in Finland?)

All the vids are full of bold claims but showing nothing but renders, and only showing a single real-world customer, the Verge motorcycle.

I'm filing this under "nothing to see here" until we see otherwise. 

[mikeselectricstuff]

Sustainability: Manufactured using abundant, affordable, and geopolitically safe materials without rare earth elements.

but don't say what these materials actually are AFICS

Extreme Temperatures: Maintains over 99% capacity in temperatures ranging from –30°C to over 100°C.

I call BS on any claim like that about any electrochemical process

[Siwastaja]

Theranos had many respectable investors. As well as random people on the board.

Yes. The only thing respectable investors prove is that if the company is a scam, it's a relatively well designed scam, because respectable investors filter out obvious scam companies.

I would be interested to hear Risto Siilasmaa's opinion of this company making totally and outright unbelievable claims of their products, something that when heard before have always been obvious and outright scams which no respectable investor believed (compare: Rainer Partanen / Europositron battery scam). What makes Donut Lab different? What makes it believable to the investors on board?

But oh well, I like the fact we don't have to speculate for long. Because the product is claimed to be finished, in production, and on the market, we will know within a few months when people get their motorcycles with these new magic batteries. If we don't hear much anything back, or start hearing whataboutism / new magical projects, then it indeed was a scam. If we hear about great performance and see teardowns and individual tests of this magical new technology, then the world will truly change for good. But I'm not holding my breath.

[Siwastaja]

Extreme Temperatures: Maintains over 99% capacity in temperatures ranging from –30°C to over 100°C.

I call BS on any claim like that about any electrochemical process

Why? It holds for li-ion, too, well, maybe from -30 to +90 or so. Capacity for battery cells is usually defined as in charge capacity (Ah), not energy capacity (Wh), and lithium ion easily maintains 99.95%, well maybe 0.05% less at the extreme hot end.

Is this claim very useful, I don't know. They probably want to give impression that it maintains 99% of power density or 99% of energy capacity, but they don't say it literally, so they can always go and say "oh we meant charge capacity". And as such this would be one of the easier claims.

[OldBeginner]

I agree, we'll wait.

[abeyer]

Generally, cases like this are one of the following categories:

1 Outright scams - either nothing exists at all, or some primitive "R&D" (orders of magnitude under-resourced) acts as a facade (think uBeam and similar)
2 Real company, real product, with some real use cases or development potential, with marketing department gone haywire making absurdly exaggerated promises
3 True breakthrough

I think this is missing 2.5 Real product, not ever going to be highly effective or profitable, but with enough similarity to something that might be a breakthrough that you can sell VCs in sinking lots of money into it in the meantime.

You have a real product all along, that's just not what you sell, it's much more profitable to sell the dream.

[Jeroen3]

What is fascinating is that they aim towards mobility...
Big phone would probably want to invest in this significantly more than any European car builder.

Or is the density horrible, like 100-200 Wh/L?

[JohanH]

The company behind the battery tech, Nordic Nano, is quite new and makes solar panels as well (or at least tries to) with the technique.

Article in Finnish from 2024
https://yle.fi/a/74-20118784

[Marco]

The only way to get that energy density is with metal anode and the only likely road towards metal anode sodium ion batteries is using NAK as a semiliquid anode. Making that compatible with a solid electrolyte is at the bleeding edge of battery research.

If they solved that, they would just have patents and be a lot more public about it. Instead they steer the road between detail which could be possible and vagueness.

[Fred27]

If it's a scam they don't have much potential for profit, just the downpayments for the pre-orders of the Verge TS Pro for a couple months. Peanuts.

Then again, ponzi scams get increasingly exhuberant towards their end.

I'll believe the battery specs when I see one, but it's not a Ponzi scheme. The bikes exist. I've ridden a Verge TS a couple of years ago - with some more standard battery chemistry, obviously.

[Marco]

Oh, I missed that NN has actually said it's a bipolar capacitor. Presumably sodium ion. That's about 3 times better than anything in literature for energy density.

https://spacefinland.fi/documents/60305973/246671122/Kaisa_Ahonen_SBF_18092025.pdf/935c23da-13e1-f822-b1f5-e9bc71386539/Kaisa_Ahonen_SBF_18092025.pdf?t=1758520599108