Donut Lab's 'solid-state' battery exposed as regular li-ion in investigation

Comments

Comment by ChiperSoft 1 day ago

Did they think nobody would notice? At some point somebody was bound to rip on open, or at least stick it in a CT scanner

Comment by Bender 20 hours ago

There are a few youtubers that will try to overcharge it, drill through it, take it apart among many other forms of destructive testing. I would expect the battery to eventually end up here [1] first.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/@WillProwse/videos

Comment by tencentshill 20 hours ago

It tarnishes my impression of Finland as well. I assumed scams like this didn't happen very much. I still assume justice will be served swiftly and they won't be able to worm out of it.

Comment by InTheArena 1 day ago

Ignore eletrek's self-serving post, go watch the youtube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5oyVNjrUPI

Comment by theamk 1 day ago

If there is video and a text post, I think the text post is almost always better (except for the few rare cases where the text description is inadequate, like woodworking etc ...). The long videos where author just spends time talking are annoyingly slow, and looking at graphs in video player is simply miserable.

Thank eletrek for converting information yo a much faster to comprehend form!

Comment by garciasn 1 day ago

"As always, I respect your time,” but proceeds to have a 44m+ video.

Just give me the text summary and be done with it.

Comment by xingped 1 day ago

Yeah, these days I use the little Ask button to just give a summary of videos more and more. Most videos could have been an email. I'll usually only let videos run when I need background noise, when there's sufficient detail throughout that a summary wouldn't capture, or when it's not an informative video and there's actual value to me in letting it run, like humorous videos.

Comment by nar001 11 hours ago

Honestly there's lots of details so I can see why it would need to be 44 minutes, and it's still a video that also has to explain complexe schemes with multiple companies too

Comment by DemocracyFTW2 9 hours ago

Share your sentiment, but in this case the https://electrek.co article mentions Ziroth / Ryan as source of the information, and I'd guess (not seen the video though) as original research it carries enough weight to warrant that amount of time (which I'm very probably not going to spend, either).

Comment by HelloMcFly 1 day ago

I would MAYBE watch a video on this topic if it were 4-6 minutes. 44 minutes? Is that really a better use of your time?

Comment by MisterTea 20 hours ago

> Is that really a better use of your time?

Your time? That's content creators ad time.

Comment by tomkarho 1 day ago

Guess Donut went with "fake it till you make it" business strategy but somewhere along the way forgot the "make it" part.

Comment by Saris 1 day ago

I've been waiting for more people to realize that their battery wasn't real, its specs were so outlandishly good they sounded completely impossible.

Comment by Bender 20 hours ago

For what it's worth there are a few of these in development but they are not ready for mass commercialization yet. Actual serious battery companies working on 3D printed solid state batteries that is, with actual real scientists. My interest has been entirely selfish. I want batteries that are lighter and will outlast my tools. I also want everything to have snap on or slide in batteries instead of being sealed in and not user serviceable.

Comment by Saris 19 hours ago

Oh I don't doubt they exist in a lab, but the idea that Donut had production ready ones was very far fetched from the beginning of this.

Comment by skullone 1 day ago

The early videos of their lab results looked a big enough scam that I couldn't believe people were buying the hype.

Comment by zormino 1 day ago

A year ago this same guy was selling artificial super intelligence, right around the corner, and you'd get so rich if you would just give him some money. no idea why anyone believes the same guy when he pulls a new scam. I'm curious what he tries to pull next year.

Comment by fgclue 1 day ago

Well that sucks.

Comment by tmikaeld 1 day ago

Did someone actually pry a production cell open or is it more hearsay?

Comment by croes 1 day ago

> electrochemical evidence — including voltage curves and cell expansion data — that conclusively identifies the tested cell as lithium-ion

Comment by nom 1 day ago

no no, you see, that's exactly how our super secret chemistry solid state battery would measure! look at it, the curves aren't even similar, very different kink due to secret anode material that's definitely not graphite

it's real guys I swear

Comment by eunos 19 hours ago

After Northvolt now this. EU can't take a break