ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Other Electric Motorcycles => Topic started by: JaimeC on January 05, 2026, 07:18:11 PM
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https://thepack.news/donut-lab-unveils-worlds-first-production-ready-solid-state-battery-at-ces/
I just wonder if they'll be designed to charge at existing stations or if another "standard" has to be developed for them? And in order to charge them at their theoretical rate, what kind of infrastructure changes will be required??
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This is the very breakthrough we all needed ... still hella expensive though. The Verge is like £40k ... wowsers.
Cas :)
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They say production costs are lower than lithium-ion, but I wonder if that assumes the same production volume. For me it's still going to be a case of I'll believe it when I see it, when there's actually customers riding the bikes out on the road. Not for the specification and performance claims but actually getting it into a product vehicle. I've heard enough claims of "coming QX of 202Y". The thing that I really don't get is how this is coming from a manufacturer that no one has heard of, not someone like Samsung, LG, Panasonic, etc. Are they just too content with current technology, they're getting enough profit from that so they can't justify investing as much into solid state?
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It charges at the existing standard DCFC stations, although the 300kw top rate charging is rare to find, with the bulk of stations being limited to 150kw (he’ll, I rarely see stations doing more than 75kw).
The 33kwh solid state battery pack is a very reasonable $5000usd more than the 20kwh standard pack, but zero details regarding weight.
I doubt production of the cells is currently huge, 12 months ago Donut (the power train manufacturer) was only 22 people and a hundred-ish million valuation.
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solis state is a bit heavier than lion. They also are very brittle, that was one of the major drawbacks to making them to size for stuff like cars where you need BIG batteries. in a watch or something no problem, but car size, very frangible.
Aaron
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After listening to years of extraordinary claims that never happen, I am absolutely not buying this. It's too on-the-nose, solving every conceivable problem in one fell swoop from this company nobody's heard of founded in 2024, while major players like Toyota, QuantumScape, Solid Power, and Factorial target 2027-2030 after a decade of focused work.
The roll-out on motorcycles rather than cars is very suspicious -- we've seen multiple companies selling an expensive mystery bike in tiny numbers dragging on for years.
Biggest red flag: does anyone think this thing shouldn't burn even more furiously when damaged? The short-out temperatures would be high enough to melt anything around them, with so much pent-up energy, in a chain reaction. The claim of "no flammable electrolytes" has to be a joke.
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The roll-out on motorcycles rather than cars is very suspicious -- we've seen multiple companies selling an expensive mystery bike in tiny numbers dragging on for years.
There’s a whole car/truck/ute/van using it too. Check out Watt Electric Vehicles is the UK.
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Color me cautiously optimistic. I’m a lot less skeptical of Verge than some other recent high-flyers because they’ve managed to deliver an actual product that people can ride and that matched the promises made. 33 kWh is impressive, but potentially achievable, so I don’t put it in the same category of BS as, say 200 MPH and 200 miles of range. The 600 km (360 mi) range claim is nonsense, of course, unless you’re riding in a bike lane the whole time. Experia x 1.5 is roughly 195 highway miles, which would be better than most gas bikes and very welcome. Now, for my money, I’d still rather wait until the tech gets put onto an Energica or equivalent unless Verge gathers some dealers and stands the test of time. It sounds like they depend on VC money, and could be on borrowed time if investors get impatient.
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I will believe it when I see it. And I do not expect to see it. Verge is full of so much stupid bullshit and poor decisions.
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https://youtu.be/Y-aPS2AwMbc?si=7-1Y8ZbnxHIzq9IG (https://youtu.be/Y-aPS2AwMbc?si=7-1Y8ZbnxHIzq9IG)
This video about the battery itself is very promising. Of course you can promise all day long and not deliver like Damon/Lightning. The delivery of the verge bikes with all solid state packs at about 84kg(calculating the 33.3kwh and 400wh/kg). It feels too close to delivery for them to over promising to the extent as others. I fully expect the 200kw charge rate for only a few seconds like car EV charging, I also expect it to be a realistic 150-200mi freeway range which would be the real gamechanger. What sucks is that they still have the 3kw AC onboard charger. There's barely a pillion sliver of a seat. The bike is pretty much completely controlled by a touchscreen which is not great in the rain. There's no storage options currently besides a tiny area under the seat. The software is super early stage while it looks prototype fancy. I test rode the EU test bike at their santa Clara location about 2 months ago.
I truly feel like this could be a massive change in the industry, but also there will be lots of defective batteries until some processes could be figured out as this feels rushed out. I truly wish I could invest in donut labs for making all this happen even while being weighed down by an expensive sister company(verge motorcycles). BTW, can we get a Verge motorcycles sub-forum in the makes section here?
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The 33kwh solid state battery pack is a very reasonable $5000usd more than the 20kwh standard pack, but zero details regarding weight.
Verge welcomes questions, which can be submitted on their web site at the bottom of the page https://www.vergemotorcycles.com/faq/#contact.
A representative's answer to a question about the weight and center of gravity was:
[...T]o clarify, both the standard and the large size batteries are solid state batteries.
The weight of our standard-size SS battery is 225 kg [496 lb.], while the large SS battery weighs 235 kg [518 lb.], so the difference is minimal and does not affect the bike’s center of gravity. Thanks to our innovative design and inherently low center of gravity, the ride remains just as stable and smooth with the standard-size battery as it is with the large SS battery.
But the specs for all three models claim that the motorcycle as a whole weighs 518 lb., so I wonder which number is correct.
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Id go with the larger number, as it will cover all models, and their butts, should anyone challenge intentional understating a major fact.
Aaron
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Seems like it may actually be a capacitor and not a battery, they're being very shy about the details but someone has done some digging.
https://youtu.be/Qsi-TS8PX7U?si=rrV32FeEy7I4m3DB
So some of the claims seem more reasonable, other's not so much. Should it actually be real and a capacitor instead of a battery I'm undecided on how I feel about it. It would depend on just how long it can actually hold a charge. As much as I would love to be able to charge up in a matter of minutes it wouldn't be so often, most of the time I'm using my battery at a rather slow rate (something like 3 miles a day commuting to work), one of these "batteries" could actually end up discharging more sitting there than me using it. There are also some weekends where I don't use my bike at all and I wouldn't want to have to remember to put it on charge Sunday night lest I wake up to a 0% charge after parking up on Friday (although, I suppose it wouldn't be as big a deal if it charges in a few minutes). This could also end up with a lot of wasted energy and I'd almost want to go out for a ride after work on the Friday just to make some use of it.
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those supercaps have limits. C rate absolutely counts and dielectric values are not very high.
also, when they first hit the market, some were bragging, 100k cycles, years and years of maintenance free performance, then the specs quietly came down to about 10k cycles and the amps they could push also came way down.
another thing to consider, a battery is chemical, it has to react to make the power, a cap is just all stored, if that were to catastrophically short,man i bet you could see some fireworks watching all those farads go woof in an instant. granted it's just carbon and mylar but that'd be one helluva ladyinger going off!
Aaron
edit, let me add one other comment, ok so it charges with a massive amp rate, in 5 minutes. do you realize how heavy the buswork and cables are going to be to carry 1ka to your car to charge. that's a lot of copper and weight. the price of copper is going to triple over the next year probbly as this quasi pm's war heats up, so yah interesting times
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Another spec, cell holds 4.0-4.1v between 5% and 80%
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watching the one video, the guy said, they just picked that voltage because it was the best for drop in and replace tech, which makes a lot of sense. This implies that it's cells stacked then to make the voltage. They also said they could make a battery any voltage you needed really, so, ok, it's, stacked.
what is the unit voltage id be interested to know. one single cell, is it 0.56v 1.5 what is the lowest voltage then, can this battery be?
one thing they did say that makes no sense to me is, the ceramic in between layer, being it's rigid it's hard to bend and shape into the cylindrical cell, so it breaks easily. why you bending finished ceramic? mold the shit into the shape you need to fit in the cell, fire it that shape then plug and play, unless he's saying stuff like that to throw other people off on how they actually do it.
Aaron
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Rather than watching the video from the company themselves how about a video from someone who did a bit more than just read the press release.
https://youtu.be/Qsi-TS8PX7U (https://youtu.be/Qsi-TS8PX7U)
I will be properly excited* if it's real but there are A LOT of red flags here.
*excited for someone else to put them in a bike because anything that needs my smartphone just to turn on can get in the bin.
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That's one of the video's I watched Stone.
So, again - What's the 'unit voltage'
Fully charge in 5 minutes - massive copper to handle that kind of current on a multi kw battery.
100k cycles - for now, lets see what this number slithers down to in another year or so of real use.
here's another company that sells supercaps
https://supercapacitor-energy.com/products/
from their specs, 20k cycles, 100 to 200 amp max current,
so on one of their faster units you are still charging / discharging at about 2c, so 30 minutes to charge it at max rate.
Even for their biggest unit the 700 volt 150 kw one - it still only can push 150 amps or about 0.8 c so you are talking an hour and a half ish to charge it.
to get it at 5 minutes you'd have to push probably 1500 to 2000 amps, on a cable that can handle 1000 volts, (ie thicker insulation, not very bendy, tougher to handle) now you are talking about multiple cables run in parallel per phase / or in this case + / - so now for your charging cable it now weighs 7 to 8 lbs per foot per phase. throw on the 30 lb viking connector about the size of a 3 gallon trash can and there you have it.
but lets get back to the original product you mentioned.
the company mentioned the battery can be any shape you want - so ok, stacked, company also mentioned it can be any voltage you want - so again, as I said, it's stacked. so what is the voltage of one non stacked unit??
the author himself pointed out, ceramic is very difficult to bend which is why these batteries are so complicated, and THAT is my point, why not pre shape the ceramic, you already know what fucking shape you need it to be. mold it to shape, fire it to harden it into that shape, then put the parts together. even if you are trying to mold the ceramic into some sort of spiral, you can slide a foil down an untensioned unit, then gently torsion (sp) it, to wind it / tighten it up, and tie it in place. ceramic will handle a little bit of that kind of gentle movement especially if it was stress relieved upon harden..... anyways.
in his video, cells in pouch charging 4 volt 270 A now 300 Amps thru those tiny little cables looks kind of sus to me, but that amp number can easily be spoofed by sliding a decimal or 'oopsie' used the wrong number of turns on the CT. grabbed the k2 by mistake instead of the k3.
not saying they are cheating but, that kind of current in something that small, imo won't last long over time.
The author is confused because the current does not reduce thru the charge, well that is kind of a point, then he says that's not how you charge a vehicle battery, but actually it kind of IS, you DO push it to about 80 percent at higher current then taper off the charge. The only reason the current really gets reduced in a car charge below 80 percent is generally due to thermal throttling.
now on that, both a cap and a battery are going to rise in voltage as they charge up, so holding that volt rock steady is a bit mysterious, and again imo. sus.
they claim clean materials and not politically aligned. and no lithium. and safe for environment.
ok, air/zinc. nickle/maganese ?? hell nickle/iron hybrid maybe, even though that tech is very old.
hopefully not silver, because that is about to get very political.
so, yes, i am quoting from the video you posted, and some other sources.
time will tell though once someone gets their hands on one, an xrf and rips it apart :D
i got the radiation machine, send me the battery / stupor cap and let's do this!!
Aaron
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Another video suggested they're likely using sodium instead of lithium which makes sense with some of their claims on cost, environmental impact (sort of), and material availability but if so why wouldn't they just say that?
I'd like to say I do think they actually have something but it isn't what they claim. They could have come along with a couple of these claims and people would still be all over it but their full claim is just too good to be true and the company and lack of patents ...
Verge are planning to ship a product in Q1 so they must have something but you can already see that something is off because they halved the charge rate and instead of saying "when you pack it all into the compact space of a motorcycle battery you have to pay much closer attention to thermals" and everyone who actually knows anything about BEV bikes nodding and saying "yes, yes, that tracks" they instead came out with some kind of flap about not wanting to rush peeing ...
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When assessing a company’s credibility, I look at their infrastructure & I’m not impressed by what I see with Donut Lab
https://maps.app.goo.gl/ehSdsd8ww4yLK64Z8?g_st=ic
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Just because they're supposedly able to offer different voltages doesn't necessarily mean it's stacked, if it truly is a capacitor then they just need to vary the thickness of the dielectric.
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That will only work so far TheRan, once you start putting some volts on, now you have issues with the can it's self, the leads arcing at connection points etc, and the dielectric strength of the separator itself. They are using carbon maybe doped with some lith as substrate and polypropylene, some use paper or cellulose base as separators / insulators. or even glass/fiberglass. Can't push that usually past 2 or 3 volts w/o issues. Supercaps, also the barrier is stupid thin, like angstroms thin sometimes, so there isn't much wiggle room there to play with thicker barriers gives more voltage. Another issue is thicker separators also gives you more room fort flaws and leaks too.
plus the good ole, thicker separators, = potentially more voltage but that'll give less capicatance overall. the surface area suffers.
If only it could be that simple. ;D
Aaron
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carbon maybe doped with some lith as substrate and polypropylene
Apparently though they're tight lipped on composition they've been keen to tell people there's no lithium.
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The Donut Labs battery appears to be a super-duper-electrolytic capacitor because the charge cycle being 100k aligns with state of the art supercapacitor properties and so is the rate and temperatures at which it will charge and discharge with physical constraints becoming the output limit. The Donut labs association w/ Nordic Nano makes this speculation most probable, IMO.
The verge promo showing (3) modules being utilized is a curious thing suggesting 100V at the terminals for 22kWhr pack?
Verge publishes 196 miles at 56mph w/ 165 lbs rider...this is pretty good for a capacitor...if this was chemical storage one is locked-in on ion energy levels which yields 1.5-4.2V...there is good chemistry at play for sure to serve as a charge/discharge moderator to allow such high energy density to exist if this is just a capacitor...
Bold claims for sure...I bet Verge will not sell w/o NDA at this time.
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Yeah, I’m supremely skeptical as to the production capacity claims, even if they do have a genuine product. The two companies involved would have less than 100 employees total (Donut, Nordic Nan)
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one thing they did say that makes no sense to me is, the ceramic in between layer, being it's rigid it's hard to bend and shape into the cylindrical cell, so it breaks easily. why you bending finished ceramic? mold the shit into the shape you need to fit in the cell, fire it that shape then plug and play, unless he's saying stuff like that to throw other people off on how they actually do it.
Aaron
Some Chinese scientists announced couple of years ago that they had succeeded in making ceramics flexible. So that is not the obstacle it once was.
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If this is indeed a capacitor then ... I am genuinely quite terrified to be within 3 feet of it. This is sort of like replacing petrol with nitroglycerine.
Cas :)
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Failure mode is not going to be a bomb going off taking out your house with it. That's the kind of hysteria the lame stream would love you to believe but critical failure mode for these, it'll pop and spark and vaporize the point of the short / fault potentially with 1000's of amps, but is very unlikely to blow the can apart. This is not an electrolytic style cap that goes out with a real hefty bang, so yes you can have some mess and fireworks but it's not going to just absolutely detonate on you.
Do i want to be near one when it goes off, no, but at the same time, you don't need to be hiding in the next county either. Given it does not have as many chemicals and liquid to spray out, it's fire hazard is most likely less than a current lith cell is as well.
I was initially wondering the same thing on these, what is catastrophic failure mode, and well - it puts on a show, but not as bad as one might expect. Newer tech for caps, and also safer than what we are used to seeing.
Shorting terminals will give you the big bang and is not nice to the thing, itll tear them up internally, but i was more interested in damage shorts like driving a spike thru one or shooting it so it's not current limited by the wire across it. I did not see any YT's on that topic, so.. nothing in concrete but from what i have seen, no it's not a bomb
Aaron
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I was more concerned about it deciding to short itself through me than exploding :P
Cas :)
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/hybrid-supercapacitor
"Hybrid battery supercapacitor is a device that has one electrode to store the charge by the battery using the Faradaic phenomenon and the other electrode to store the charge mainly based on the capacitive process. It was noted the lithium/sodium/potassium/magnesium acts as hybrid-based battery supercapacitors showed large power of about 0.1–30 kW kg?1 of the supercapacitors and greater energy density of about 5–200 Wh kg?1 of the secondary battery. Further, this kind of the hybrid devices has its own superiority due to its stable long-cycle performance and economical cost."
DONUT Labs have stated they aren't using lithium...
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Cas it would be no different than a battery. as long as ya keeps yer dick skinners away from where they don't belong, ya should be fine!
Seriously though, it'd be just as insulated, and protected and protecting as any battery would to keep itself, the bike, and you safe.
Lets say that you did get into a catastrophic wreck. With a battery, it's chemical, so it's generating electric as long as the chemical action is going on, so in theory could possibly keep making electricity and fire for well... several minutes after the event, depending on how fast it finally all burns through, being a threat for that entire length of time. With a capacitor ALL the electricity is already there, stored as an electrostatic field. When it goes, it all goes at once, you'll get the blow out, then it's over, it's all used up, no chemicals making more electric, to continue the power hazard.
With this in mind, one could say that capacitors may even be safer.
Just make sure when you set it off, you are below 88mph.
Aaron
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Fortunately there's a failsafe mechanism built-in to the design anyway, which is by virtue of it costing £40000 I'll never sit on one :)
Cas :)
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Fortunately there's a failsafe mechanism built-in to the design anyway, which is by virtue of it costing £40000 I'll never sit on one :)
Cas :)
I'm with you on THAT!! For that price it would have to be a LOT more practical. Right now, it's just "garage candy." What's the point of increased range if you can't take anything or anyone with you??
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For 40k I'll be buying an electric car that goes and charges faster and further.
Cas :)
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I feel like it would be ideal for those that can't charge at home, but then who can afford a 40 grand bike and doesn't have a house with at least a drive way.
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Not fond of traction motor contributing to unsprung mass just wondering how it handles...don't like the exposed phase conductors either...
Lot's of YouTube chatter regarding this subject makes me dubious but hopeful that a single Verge bike can be documented going 600km.
Simple as that...no chemistry disclosure or details about the battery is needed....just a GoPro camera on a chase vehicle will prove it or not.
Physics...doesn't require guts or compromises IP, but it would shake the EV world...hey DonutBoy, are you listening?
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Shhh !! it's secret, if they tell you, they'll have to kill you. but they got a slightly used lightning they'll sell you dirt cheap !!
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No point in speculating about it really, either everyone's wrong and they're right, or the other way around, and nobody will know until there's a bike to ride.
Regarding the unsprung weight ... a couple of 'tubers have ridden the thing and they basically said, yes, you can feel it's got a really heavy rear wheel and it handles a bit oddly as a result, rather like a cruiser. My main thought concerning it is wear or accidental damage and subsequent astronomical replacement cost.
Cas :)
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They did release a video demonstrating how to do one thing I'd wondered about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpk7y7bWdCc
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The thing is though the video literally doesn't show the one thing it promises to show.
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Honestly I'm sick of every conversation about this thing turning into pages and pages about whether you can change the tyre that just rehash the same points over and over. Clearly you can change the tyre.
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Maybe they shouldn't have made the process absurdly stupid and maybe also let you BALANCE the tire. Which you cannot do.
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No point in speculating about it really, either everyone's wrong and they're right, or the other way around, and nobody will know until there's a bike to ride.
You're no fun...speculation is the spice of life.
If I were a betting man, I would speculate that Nordic Nano is very good at what they do and stumbled on something that makes battery fabrication easy.
Having had a front row seat to industry methods for such manufacturing the hardest process step to deal with is the separator because of the key role it plays e.g. the thinner the better and the more difficult it is for automation handling that results...it's the biggest burden a battery manufacturer will face in the pursuits for higher energy density...solid state requires a press operation and integrity testing to ensure no voids or bubbles exist and contrary to conventional thinking, solid state electrolyte is tacky and impregnated into the separator...ugly has heck for handling like I said.
Just a guess, Nordic Nono has eliminated the separator as a laminate layer of material but instead has vapor deposited a polymer suitable for the task...permeability to ions but maintaining the electrical insulation necessary. So huge would this be...Donut Lab claims it can be cut (or grown) in virtually any geometric requirement...eliminate the separator in the classical sense and this statement has meaning.
The rest has been proven in transistor doping technology to deposit positive and negative ions parking them within the carbon nanostructure prior to this novel means for electrical insulation.
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This video goes fairly deep in investigating what might be inside the battery. Very interesting and does some proper investigative journalism, although obviously no inside info.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbGxbII44eE
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As a certain Vulcan would say: "Fascinating."
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planting these batteries on the back of solar panels might not be such a good idea when you consider panels can reach 180 degrees on a hot day.
Aaron
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First results seem to be out. Disappointly close to just advanced NCM cells
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For reference.
https://pub-fee113bb711e441db5c353d2d31abbb3.r2.dev/VTT_CR_00092_26.pdf (https://pub-fee113bb711e441db5c353d2d31abbb3.r2.dev/VTT_CR_00092_26.pdf)
The charge rate is impressive and thermal tolerance even more so.
The MissGoElectric video was informative too.
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Where is the weight of the cell tested? Strange it says beyond the obvious way at the bottom of the last page.
From what I have watched on youtube it heats up too much to be used in a pack for an EV. And the charts look like I believe nmc. Miss Go electric sure can smile and talk at the same time she is up to episode 102 or so at this point. Her series was The Current now it is Weekly EV news.
Some other youtube guys seem to think this battery "breakthrough" means battery powered airplanes.
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I really love all the speculation.
Sooner or later there will be a point when we know it's bullshit or not. For now it's fun to guess though.
Kind of like when you buy a lottery ticket and daydream about how you'll spend the money if you win.
Its fun to imagine what it would be like to have a bike with a battery as described, and until we know its vaporware......it could be real. Is it like that cat? where it can be real and a scam until it actually gets measured.
Personally I like it. Even with the cruiser handling, the probably dangerous motor phase leads, and wonky wheel maintenance. I'll get one as soon as they have a second model year, lol.
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Miss Go Electric is at again in the Current episode 111. A few minutes of video at this time around minute 10 https://youtu.be/8x-56K91vek?t=612
I go back to the link in post 1 and production and real-world use must have distorted meanings. Apparently, their partners (Donut/Verge) for the gen 1 battery have discontinued, that is the one sent out for testing and gen 2....