Introducing Donut Battery: the world’s first all-solid-state battery in production vehicles.
Available now at gigawatt-hour level production capacity to OEMs world-wide, and already powering the upgraded Verge TS Pro motorcycle shipping to customers.
Donut Battery is now also powering heavy transport industry through Cova Power’s smart trailers, and it’s natively integrated into a new EV skateboard platform available to OEMs today.
Coming in various sizes and formats, Donut Battery is suitable for use cases from SUVs to supercars and from drones to heavy machinery and even stationary energy storage.
A truly no-compromise all-solid-state battery engineered for real-world use:
• 400 Wh/kg energy density
• Five-minute full charge
• Designed for up to 100,000 cycles
• Extremely safe
• Made of globally abundant materials
• Over 99% capacity retained in -30 degrees celsius
• Lower cost than lithium-ion
This is the moment combustion stops competing and starts becoming irrelevant.
So, is this the real McCoy, or just another claim that’ll be forgotten in a few months?
And, if real, what does this mean for other battery companies, like ELVA?
I would take these claims with a massive grain of salt.
I did a quick background check, and according to PitchBook (https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/732078-01), Donut Lab has only 22 employees. That number alone makes me extremely skeptical of their R&D capabilities.
It’s not just the battery. They are also claiming to have created the “Donut Motor,” supposedly the world’s first in-wheel motor that optimizes torque and power density while eliminating traditional drivetrain components. To claim revolutionary, industry-leading breakthroughs in two completely different, complex hardware verticals (electrochemical and mechanical engineering) simultaneously is a huge red flag.
Battery chemistry and mechanical manufacturing are mature, heavily researched industries. While academic breakthroughs certainly happen, the gap between a lab result and industrial mass production is enormous. It is incredibly rare to find a “magic bullet” product that beats the entire global industry on every single metric—energy density, charging speed, safety, temperature resilience, and cost—all at the same time.
If this company had 22,000 employees and billions in R&D, I might give them a 50% chance of having a product that is industrially viable. But with 22 people? I seriously doubt they can even achieve these specs in a controlled lab environment, let alone support the “gigawatt-hour level production” they are claiming. The distance between a lab prototype and a commercial product is usually measured in years, and I just don’t see a team of this size bridging that gap overnight.
You are totally on target when considering an objective of entering the manufacturing space, but it seems the significance of this development is the introduction of a disruptive technology.
Just 4 hours ago, a UK-based tech Youtuber Ziroth uploaded a video explaining his experience visiting Donut Lab at CES. He definitely understands the tech field much better than I do. Here is the link to the video: Investigating The World’s First Solid State Battery - YouTube
Below is a quick AI summary if you do not have time for the video:
The Announcement & Claims
Donut Lab announced a revolutionary “solid-state battery” with “holy grail” specifications:
Energy Density: 400 Wh/kg (state-of-the-art).
Charging: Full charge in 5 minutes.
Lifespan: 100,000 cycles (approx. 50 million miles).
Safety: Non-flammable, operates between -30°C and 100°C.
Materials: Globally abundant materials (no supply chain issues).
The Investigation & Red Flags
Host Ryan Inis visited their booth at CES and noted several inconsistencies:
Vaporware Vibes: The batteries on display were 3D-printed mockups, not real cells. Staff refused to discuss chemistry or manufacturing.
Impossible Shapes: Donut Lab claimed the battery could be printed into any shape (e.g., the body of a drone or a snowflake), which contradicts standard “jelly roll” battery manufacturing.
Charging Anomalies: Test data showed the cell charging with constant current and constant voltage from 5% to 80%. This is not how electrochemical batteries function.
The Lithium Contradiction: The battery charges at 4.2V (standard for Lithium-ion), but staff explicitly stated there is no lithium in the system. They claimed the voltage was simply “tuned” to mimic standard batteries for compatibility.
The “Smoking Gun”: Nordic Nano
The host discovered that Donut Lab had invested in a Finnish company called Nordic Nano.
Nordic Nano produces something called an “Electrostatic Bipolar Capacitor.”
Their pitch deck claims the exact same specs as Donut Lab: 400 Wh/kg and 50,000+ cycles.
They use screen-printing nanotechnology, which explains why the “battery” can be made into any shape.
The Conclusion
The host concludes that Donut Lab’s product is not a battery, but a capacitor.
The Problem: While capacitors explain the fast charging and long life, achieving 400 Wh/kg energy density with a capacitor is orders of magnitude beyond current physics and technology.
The Verdict: The host is highly skeptical. He suggests that while the company might believe their own marketing, the claims require extraordinary proof that isn’t there yet. He warns this could be a case of a component supplier (Nordic Nano) misleading the product manufacturer (Donut Lab), or Donut Lab misleading investors.
To be honest, this is the same reason I cannot trust ELVA, in my end of Sep summary:
ELVA: I started with around 5% with the board, and decided to get out. I do not like the CEO’s personality, and he seems to be braggadocio a lot. E.g., “our technology is too advanced to be used in EVs”. No, that’s not true. EV is probably the biggest market for battery now. If some of ELVA’s technology far exceeds the requirement of EV, then it means they wasted money innovating in areas that market/users do not care. At the same time, their technical weakness, or their cost, prevents them from entering EV market. I plan to exit ELVA completely. The company may grow well, if one of the CEO’s many claims goes true. However, I do not want to bet on it.
Thanks for the post, Innerpeace. I was about to post some similar thoughts as I am at CES and stumbled into the Donut Lab booth today. I spoke with a couple of the representatives and came away with the following:
My first question to Donut Labs: Are you guys legit? They laughed and then we had an interesting discussion.
Donut Labs is a spin off from Verge Motorcycles. For me, this explains the small size of the company in conjuction with the impressive technology (at least theoretically).
The motorcycle was the first product to use the donut motor and is in production with a non-solid state battery today.
Verge believed the donut motor, as well as their solid-state battery technology, had significant valuable on its own and thus they spun out Donut Labs.
At the booth, they had several motors on display: 4-5 bare motors (in the shape of rims), inside of the motorcycle, and finally in an EV prototype by a UK company, Longbow. All looked legit. One employee described riding the Verge Motorcycle (with the donut motor)
From AI: Longbow Motors is a new UK electric vehicle (EV) startup founded by former executives from Lucid, McLaren, and Tesla, aiming to build lightweight, classic-style British sports cars like the “featherweight” Speedster and Roadster, focusing on driver engagement and performance, with targeted deliveries for late 2026.
From me: The Longbow concept car looked pretty slick and clearly had the donut motors on each wheel.
Donut Labs told me that other car manufacturers are interested and they expect forthcoming announcements.
Donut Labs also has a partnership with Cova Power who is developing a novel big rig “trailers that power themselves”, meaning the trailer itself has a battery as well as the donut motor in each wheel. This concept is clearly many quarters, if not years, away from production. See covapower.com
Regarding the battery technology, I can confirm that the employees would not say a word about the underlying technology. They did say that this year they would be releasing qualification data to show its performance and reliability. They clearly understood the burden of proof was not met and they would need to prove their technology.
The displays for the batteries appeared to be 3D printed cases seemingly full of nothing.
Donut Labs told me their solid-state battery version of the motorcycle is “in production” and would be for sale in Q2’26. I checked their webpage and indeed the Verge TS Pro is available for order (for $30k) with delivery stated for Q1’26. Donut claims it will be the world’s first production vehicle with all solid-state batteries. If these start shipping on schedule, the technology of the battery will no longer be a secret.
In summary, the donut motor seems quite legit and is already for sale on a motorcycle. At least one seemingly credible startup EV company is designing it into a car intended to be on the market in late 2026. The battery technology is a big TBD but claimed to be in production in 2026. I would not base any investing decisions based on Donut Labs’ lofty claims as of today. But it may be interesting to see if it unfolds positively for the company in the next year.
The challenge in this next-gen battery space is scaling up manufacturing to meet the appropriate level of demand. Companies like Electrovaya, Amprius, and Enovix are just starting to reach the level of scale needed to sell into larger companies.
Where I see Donut Lab having issues is being based out of the EU with a prototype level product. Typically VC money from the EU wants a guaranteed ROI or sure bet to raise capital. When you see a European technology startup go public like WISE or ADYEN they are already deeply GAAP profitable because the economics are already proven. This is why I think it is unlikely Donut Lab will succeed in the long term because they won’t be able to find investors who are willing to wait years at unprofitability with dilution.
It is also worth noting that none of the companies ELVA, AMPX, or ENVX main markets are for electric vehicles. Car EV batteries are a commoditized business where its a race to the bottom on price and dominated by cheaper manufacturing in Asia. Electrovaya has detailed why it doesn’t make sense to put a battery than can do 3M miles in a car which will typically not run for longer than 200k miles. The end result would just be the consumer paying up on car where the battery uses a tiny fraction of its potential cycles.
I believe the largest challenge is getting the battery tech right. Some years ago, Musk has said there have been many claims made from battery manufacturers that haven’t panned out, and so Tesla’s rule is that any battery manufacturer has to send them a cell for testing before Tesla will even talk with them.
The world is hungry for better batteries, and anyone who has proof that they have the solution (patented), will make a ton of money no matter how small or where they are located.
I’ve commented before that I believe that to be total BS. If someone has a true 3million mile battery that meets all the other criteria (power delivery, charging speed, safety, energy density, operating temperature, self-discharge rate, charging loss, initial cost, etc.) they’ll be a huge market for them. The funny thing is it’s the gasoline engine that has the most problems and costs the most money to keep going over 200k miles. At any rate, a 3M mile battery, if true, could easily be swapped into new car bodies - kind of the inverse of the car battery swapping some companies are toying around with today.
So, yeah, I’m not buying that “commodization” excuse.
The reason none of the companies trying to make solid state batteries are pursuing automotive is that their batteries aren’t suitable for the automotive use case. Go look up why solid state batteries aren’t used and you’ll read everything from high manufacturing cost, high operating temperatures needed, mechanical, dendrite, interfacial resistance, and SEI layer problems, to name a few.
It might be more accurate to say the battery companies here need both a combination of the right product market fit and the manufacturing capacity to scale up. Let us say in that case of Donut Labs, they meet with Tesla and the Tesla management is impressed. There’s still the chicken and the egg problem of they have no where near the capacity to scale up to the demand that Tesla would want for a production car.
When you look at the history of these next generation battery makers they had to get many strategic investors over the years who are playing the long game of providing funds going to CapEx. For example, Walmart and Toyota are strategic investors in Electrovaya. Amprius has strategic investors with AeroVironment AVAV and AirBus.
These next generation battery makes are not targeting the car markets though because the car can only handle so much performance. The main market for Amprius is electric aircraft right now with drones, loitering aircraft, and the next generation electric aircraft that AirBus is building. Similar with forklifts, they may be running 20+ hours per day for three shifts, and this is more stress than a car is typically undergoing.
The world is hungry for better batteries, and anyone who has proof that they have the solution (patented), will make a ton of money no matter how small or where they are located.
Electrovaya has the “cycle data” now as their batteries were advertised to work for seven years when Walmart took the change to start using these batteries. In the field the batteries performed better than the simulations showed, and those first generation batteries are now outliving the original forklifts they were placed in. One of their conferences detailed those first generation batteries are still at 95%+ charging capacity. Again keeping in mind these forklifts are in use practically every day, and potentially long hours per day.
The management team has detailed how having the cycle data is helping in sales and acquiring new customers. Its a lot easier to complete the sale when they can show the batteries will last as long as advertised, along with a perfect safety record in the field.
I do not really see how this scenario would make sense for the consumer. Let’s assume there is a battery that does 3M+ miles for a car. Does it make sense to push up the price of a Tesla MSPR significantly and then create a 2nd hand market for the batteries afterwards?
I also do not think buys of a new Tesla would want a second hand battery placed in their car. Tesla would also have to arrange for the switching of the battery and increased service costs.
Electrovaya has given a lot of details why their attempts into the auto market did not work from the late 2000s, and early 2010s. They had prototype sales with GM and Chrysler back then. The car manufacturers were not looking for the extra safety features that Electrovaya was advertising which come at an extra cost.
Also they couldn’t compete on margins because of cheaper manufacturers, and the car company’s biggest priority was keeping the cost low. Electrovaya had to pivot to other markets because of that and the CEO said “the company was on the ropes” during that timeframe and almost went bankrupt. The company has since found the right product market fit in my opinion with the warehouse batteries and then expanding to the next closest adjacent field of robotics.
The problem is they’re pushing safety that sacrifices performance. For instance, Tesla’s 2170 cells have higher energy densities both in terms of weight and size than Electrovaya’s latest cells.
As a result, ELVA has relegated their high voltage battery efforts to applications like buses, trucks, and mining vehicles, which presumably are more tolerant to larger/heavier batteries.
With demonstrable battery tech Electrovaya would have no problem raising the necessary capital to scale; Tesla itself might even invest in them or want to buy them out. If that’s not happening it’s because the cells don’t have the right combination of characteristics to make that investment worthwhile for automotive applications. And if they’re so great for buses and trucks, Tesla would certainly look at them for the Semi.
Semi-trucks have a lifespan around and over a million miles today, with the diesel engine being the typical gating factor. If Electrovaya’s batteries last a few million miles why aren’t companies like Tesla using them for their truck applications?
No, all automotive OEMs are still searching for better batteries. The next-gen battery makers are not targeting automotive because their batteries aren’t better than what’s being used today. What works in Forklifts won’t necessarily work in Automotive. Heavier is better in forklifts, but not in automotive.
