You guys have to read this because Donut Lab isn't just wrong — they are a textbook case of battery hype that crossed into fraud territory. They claimed their solid-state battery had an energy density of 400Wh/kg and could hit 100,000 charge cycles, which would revolutionize EVs if it were real. But the Ziroth investigation by Ryan Inis Hughes shows those numbers are pure fiction manufactured through a calculated campaign of deception. Donut Lab's CEO Marko Lehtimäki presented what looked like miracle tech but was actually just a standard lithium-ion cell with an NMC chemistry dressed up in marketing layers and rebadged as "solid state."
The breakdown is fascinating because it shows exactly how they pulled it off through authority laundering of the highest order. Donut Lab paid Finland's prestigious VTT Technical Research Institute to run specific tests — but only those that helped their narrative — while avoiding the two metrics that actually mattered: 400Wh/kg density and 100,000-cycle durability. Hughes also got a whistleblower, Lauri Peltola (former CCO of their manufacturing partner Nordic Nano Group), to come forward about the deception. Even more damning is that over 20 independent battery experts weighed in — including Julian Zahnow at Fraunhofer Research Institute — whose analysis of voltage curves and cell expansion data proved Donut Lab's "solid-state" behaved identically to a standard NMC lithium-ion battery.
What makes this story worth the full watch on Ziroth is how deep Lehtimäki buried it all in a convoluted web of shell companies, questionable fundraising techniques, and financial dealings that raise serious questions about fraud. The Verge's piece even notes what VTT never addressed — and wouldn't have been able to if they hadn't picked and chose which tests to run. This isn't just "good marketing gone wrong" because the claims were demonstrably false under honest scrutiny. Donut Lab fabricated an illusion, and anyone still hyping up their numbers is buying into a house of cards. The bottom line: when someone promises energy density double what lithium-ion already achieves with zero transparent verification, run — not walk.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/science/946608/donut-labs-debunk-solid-state-battery
The breakdown is fascinating because it shows exactly how they pulled it off through authority laundering of the highest order. Donut Lab paid Finland's prestigious VTT Technical Research Institute to run specific tests — but only those that helped their narrative — while avoiding the two metrics that actually mattered: 400Wh/kg density and 100,000-cycle durability. Hughes also got a whistleblower, Lauri Peltola (former CCO of their manufacturing partner Nordic Nano Group), to come forward about the deception. Even more damning is that over 20 independent battery experts weighed in — including Julian Zahnow at Fraunhofer Research Institute — whose analysis of voltage curves and cell expansion data proved Donut Lab's "solid-state" behaved identically to a standard NMC lithium-ion battery.
What makes this story worth the full watch on Ziroth is how deep Lehtimäki buried it all in a convoluted web of shell companies, questionable fundraising techniques, and financial dealings that raise serious questions about fraud. The Verge's piece even notes what VTT never addressed — and wouldn't have been able to if they hadn't picked and chose which tests to run. This isn't just "good marketing gone wrong" because the claims were demonstrably false under honest scrutiny. Donut Lab fabricated an illusion, and anyone still hyping up their numbers is buying into a house of cards. The bottom line: when someone promises energy density double what lithium-ion already achieves with zero transparent verification, run — not walk.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/science/946608/donut-labs-debunk-solid-state-battery