Watch Donut Lab's Mysterious Solid-State Battery Charge In An Actual EV

"The Finnish startup plans to supply what it claims is the world's first production solid-state battery pack to Estonian company Verge Motorcycles starting this spring. Until now, we had only seen lab-level tests on individual cells that didn't reveal much about the battery's real-world performance."

"The battery has an industry-defining 5C charging rate at the pack level, while only shockingly having air cooling, Donut Lab CEO Marko Lehtimaki said in a YouTube video. To decode that jargon, a 1C rate would charge a battery in an hour, 2C means 30 minutes, and so on."

"The company made sweeping claims of a solid-state battery breakthrough at the Consumer Electronics Show this year: 400 watt-hours per kilogram of energy density, 100,000 charge cycles, and zero use of rare-earth materials. Battery experts and industry executives pushed back hard, calling out the lack of proof, validation results, or patents."

Donut Lab, a Finnish startup, demonstrated its solid-state battery technology in real-world conditions by charging a Verge TS Pro motorcycle at a public DC fast-charging station. The 18 kWh battery pack features a 5C charging rate, enabling theoretical full charge in approximately 12 minutes, and uses air cooling instead of liquid cooling. Verge Motorcycles plans to begin production deployment this spring. This marks the first real-world test of the battery pack beyond laboratory cell-level testing. The demonstration follows Donut Lab's earlier claims of 400 Wh/kg energy density and 100,000 charge cycles, which faced industry skepticism due to lack of independent validation and patent documentation.

Read at insideevs.com