Continuing from last week on CES, there’s another cool tech from Donut Lab. There has been a lot of excitement and mystery around their “all solid-state” battery, so I thought I will cover that today. It has been something with extraordinary claims with some speculative merits.
Donut Lab claims their battery does 400 Wh/kg(similar to Lithium-ion ones), full charge in 5 minutes, and do up to 100,000 charge cycles. They also claim over 99% capacity at −30°C and above 100°C, plus no flammable liquid electrolyte, no thermal runaway chain, and no metallic dendrites. All of which are problems in current state-of-the-art Lithium batteries. Hence, the scepticism from me.
On paper, it looks like battery energy density plus a super capacitor in one box. If it is real, something unusual is happening at the interfaces. The most detailed public investigation I’ve seen is MissGoElectric’s deep dive (Google her). It connects Donut Lab’s story to Nordic Nano, a Finland-based nanotech company that has pushed nano-structured electrodes, screen-printed coatings, and other manufacturing angles for energy storage, and that Donut Lab has publicly invested in.
The deep dive points at printed or coated electrodes, a nanostructured TiO2 scaffold, and a more capacitor-like surface storage mode to hit high power. It also cites older Nordic Nano material and a founder-linked paper from the same circle that used the phrase “electrostatic bipolar capacitor”. That does not prove it is a super cap, but it suggests a hybrid where surface charge and battery chemistry are blended on purpose.
Donut Lab says it is shipping demo packs to OEMs under NDAs, and that third-party labs will test the cells without opening them. Verge motorcycles are launching with this battery tech soon. They also claim the chemistry avoids rare or sensitive metals, but they have not disclosed the full bill of materials yet. I’m definitely following this with great detail. Because if this is true, its some truly disruptive tech that breaks all existing supply chains and Gigafactories based on Lithium tech.
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