Can for once something too good to be true actually be true? :(
Well, the original Li-Ion batteries by John Goodenough are Goodenough
We just need a Dr. John BetterBatteryMan for solid battery tech
Wild. Did they really think they could just hype this up and release something like this and not get found out?
That’s how its done now thanks to assholes like this.
It’s worked for their channel so far.
Except they’ve misled investors, and that will get them into deep shit.
Because fuck consumers
Mislead consumers, FTC sleeps
Mislead investors…
What FTC lmao, they’re a Finnish company registered in Estonia. Billionaires don’t get fast tracked court cases here. They’ll move to some other country long before anything happens.
My mistake. I forgot other countries exist.
But yeah I dropped that key point I guess between finishing the article and commenting.
Wouldn’t those countries have more strict regulations than the US? Maybe Finland more than Estonia?
Courts move at snails pace usually. Years for such a thing in Estonia at least. Have to prove fraud and all that.
For debts it’s possible to accelerate things, but the key here is that Donut Labs is the debtor, not Mark. He himself will only be liable when fraud is proven.
Ftfy
Because fuck consumers
Mislead consumers, FTC sleeps
Mislead investors…
Also they just need to make a little donation and I’m sure they will be pardoned.
Pardoned by whom? We don’t have presidential pardons in the countries they’re operating out of.
You only get in trouble if you mislead rich investors.
If you mislead poor investors, then that’s just business and they should have known better.
That’s why ~Everything is Securities Fraud~
Reading the article, the investigation isn’t a case of independent labs getting hold of the battery and definitively disproving Donut’s claims. It’s battery experts and researchers looking at the data Donut has released and saying, “these claims are extraordinary and the evidence doesn’t yet convince us. Here’s what we think the battery actually is.” That’s a very reasonable scientific position, especially when you’re talking about 400 Wh/kg, 5-minute charging, and 100,000 cycles all at once.
But without independently tested samples, there are still a lot of unknowns and inferences involved. That’s not to say the skeptics are wrong, but it’s still arguably a case of skeptics being skeptical… reasonably so, but based on analysis of the available evidence rather than direct examination of the battery itself.
I mean these days with all the hyped up scams all over social media including Lemmy… yeah?
That wouldn’t be unprecedented behavior in the battery industry. The mark ups on batteries can be huge and if they fail, unless the battery explodes, most people will just buy a new one. It’s difficult for one customer to see the difference between a defective battery and a battery that failed sooner than expected. It is the kind of industry that attracts con artists.
Investors are stupid enough if only everyone else didn’t tell them to be so dumb about this
No one thinks they’ll get caught.
Really, how is that possible? The company making absolutely ridiculous claims that are in no way possible and are instantly a red flag for anyone whos ever touched tech with a 20 foot pole instantly sees is lying about there mystical miracle tech?
The problem is there are multiple tech companies involved, all bullshitting each other. It starts with a German screening technology company claiming they can screen produce the solid state electrode, when they never made a single battery ever. if company A can develop the tech then company B can assemble the battery to do into the motorcycles in company C.
Formula E racing uses the state of the art in batteries, and for 2027 they sourced a lithium battery even though cost was no object.
Two Chinese companies claim to be making solid state batteries, put the performance is only equal to classic lithium.
Toyota got burned on this. They were promised SS batteries delivered by 2025. Never happened.
Donut Labs was also looking for funding from a large number of smaller investors, none of which had the knowledge or capability to really look into what was going on
This is a model now.
Never invest in tech if you cannot do due diligence.
Aaw crap, if that ever happened to me it would really bum me out if I had good intentions.
I’d be bummed too but it would mean I probably didn’t do the basic due diligence for my job
Just fyi, you can make a solid state lithium battery. It’s just the only benefit for it is less weight for the same space rather than increased energy density.
I thought I read Toyota was building their own ginormous SS battery factory several years ago.
That timeline gets extended every year. Toyota is depending on a supplier, they are not a battery company.
Critical thinking is a dying concept. Most of humanity has no concept of reality any more. There area few points of hope in the younger generation but it’s not looking promising from where I’m sitting.
all hope died the second AI become available and people started using that to create their own, personal, comfortable micro-realities, free of pesky facts and truth.
TBF, Something in the vague range of the battery they’ve been promising is actively in development in a bunch of skunkworks, but it’s still a long way off if it ever comes to fruition. If they did manage to make a sodium ion battery, it would have been a huge deal.
But they didn’t, and when it does happen, it won’t need to be used to sell motorcycles.
If they did manage to make a sodium ion battery, it would have been a huge deal.
CATL already have a sodium ion battery they’re prepping to market.
There were also a couple other manufacturers that were in a similar position 6 months ago before lithium prices dropped and drove them into bankruptcy.
Announcing sodium ion batteries for consumers was enturely realistic. The issue is that Donut Labs claimed they had sodium solid-state batteries, which are years if not decades away
Industry experts who met with CT Coatings representatives doubted their technical skills. Julian Zanau from the Fraunhofer Research Institute recalled concerns following discussions with company officials.
“The first impression I got was that these people have no idea how a battery actually works. They were talking about no rare earth metals in their batteries and therefore no lithium, and to any chemist lithium has nothing to do with rare earth minerals.”
🔥
The running theory I had seen was that they were licensing out someone else’s tech, and then claiming it as their own.
And now this article shows that to be more true than I had thought.
Meanwhile, there’s a company out of Taiwan doing this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQFVIs4leig
The guy cuts a cell in half with a pair of scissors, and as soon as the scissors are pulled away the little LED light comes back on.
These seem like ones tested by GreatScott 7 years ago: https://youtu.be/kJXRyWQgOY4
Same company, their newest cells are based on that tech, but with 7 years of advances, so 360Wh/kg. Which is about the same as most other top end Lithium-ion batteries, just solid-state rather than a liquid electrolyte.
There is some specific reason why we don’t use it? Or they last too long so companies don’t want to sell them?
They’re brand new at that energy density. They just haven’t made their way into many products.
ProLogium is building a gigafactory in France.
The newest batteries also seems to solve the charging issues, which was rather slow.
sure, because everything on Youtube is real.
YouTube is a platform for millions of accounts, it’s not a monolith of uniform quality.
Two-Bit DaVinci is respected and credible.
Ah…the Theranos business plan.
3D printed quantum solid state AI fusion reactors on asteroids is the future!
Fueled by FSD SpaceX xAI. /$
I bet someone from HN is already “generating” that brilliant idea thanks to their SOTA meta-harness right now using Claude Fable. Or something.
What no nanobots? What sort of product is this.
That’s like '90s hype based in '80s dreams, like Drexler’s Engines Of Creation. I could have also thrown in chaos theory and fuzzy logic but these buzzwords are quite obscure now.
take my money, fellow human! :)
I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed
I would be disappointed, but random news about sodium ion batteries keeps popping up and making me think it’s not so bad after all.
The there was that one article that was way too sensational to be anywhere near adoption, though it was pretty neat.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260603023917.htm#google_vignette
Researchers have discovered how microscopic imperfections and atomic vibrations can be used to control a powerful quantum effect in an advanced material. The effect can turn alternating electrical signals from the environment directly into the kind of current electronic devices need, without traditional components. As temperature changes, the signal can even flip direction, giving scientists a new way to tune device performance. (though there were little to no details about how much power was/could be generated at all and seemed based way more in theory than practical application)
Dang, was just seeing a bunch of YT vids popping up about this, how it was going to be big if true.
If they are really a fraud, how did they think they wouldn’t get caught??
If they are really a fraud, how did they think they wouldn’t get caught??
That’s how Ponzi schemes work. See this thing?
Under $50,000! All carbon fiber! Solar powered! 1,600 km range!
This thing has been vaporware since 2009, company started 20 YEARS AGO -4,000 suckers signed up.
It went chapter 11 in 2011.
Bought by a Chinese company, " company stated it would manufacture 5000 vehicles by the end of 2012".
total to date: 0.
On December 8, 2020, the company presented a driveable prototype and started accepting reservations. By December 14 the company had over 3000 refundable preorders for $100 each. Aptera released its 2021 annual report in May 2022, stating they had 103 employees and over 18,000 reservations for their solar electric vehicle. By mid 2022, the company raised a total of $40 million, planning to get to production by the end of the year.They acquired three buildings in Carlsbad, California, with a combined space of over 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2). In November 2022 Aptera announced they have redesigned the structural components of the vehicle, and it requires more funding before they can get to production.
total to date: 0.
Aptera announced in April 2025 the company raised a total of $130 million through crowdfunding and $10 million from other investors, and the company requires an additional $60 million before it can start low-volume production.
total to date: 0.
Aptera announced in March 2026 it has raised a further $17M, and plans starting low-scale production no earlier than March 2027 pending raising a further $50 million.
It just goes on and on and no one is questioning the utter bullshit claims of range and solar charging and the lack of a single vehicle in 20 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_Motors
But when Elizabeth Holmes did this…straight to jail.
Now in 2026, there are serious safety concerns about vehicles that look like cars but are actually motorcycles. There is a Federal bill to ban these on the table.
wild!
If you find out about something through YouTube ad, that’s all the proof you need that it’s a scam
What I don’t understand is YouTube showing me constant ads for something I’ve already bought and like. I’m not buying more earplugs, compression socks, and sports shorts any time soon.
Marketing people are dumb. Their entire major is about the misrepresentation statistical data. Convince the guy paying you the ads work and wont doesn’t matter if they don’t.
If they need to advertise to promote their product, its trash
I feel the same way up to a point. I think that making people aware of the existence and purpose of your company and product through advertising is very useful for all parties, as a customer cannot demand a supplied item that they are unaware of.
I feel that it crosses over into “its trash” territory when the product is aggressively marketed in a manner that distorts the facts and attempts to artificially drum up demand by inciting FOMO or through other unethical psychological tricks, all of which would be illegal in a sane world.
If anyone ever asks you that old thought experiment about naming a field that would immediately make the world a better place if it ceased to exist, one very high quality answer for this is “marketing”. Advertising is the Siamese twin of marketing, but not the evil twin. Marketing often dresses up and pretends to be advertising, but they are distinct.
Targeted advertising is somewhat misnamed, IMO, and is not just advertising, again wearing a disguise to look like it is. It is actually harassment and stalking, and is only used for advertising. Saying its real name puts folks off for some reason.
Does this mean the technology is impossible at current then? Or just that the company didn’t deliver?
There are several companies making great leaps right now. It is still far from commercially viable yet.
Which is why it seemed so far fetched for Donut to claim they had this battery without anyone knowing they were working on it. It was immediately suspicious.
Just this company that didn’t deliver. There’s still a lot of other companies doing research for solid state battery
Who will all have a harder time finding investor money and will meet with more skepticism as development proceeds.
Like all other aspects of our greedy scam culture, the possibility of this new battery chemistry and some of the remaining social trust has been monetized and traded for cash to line somebody’s pockets.
You can buy a solid state battery right now on Digikey for 5 bucks. Lithium-ceramic. They suck ass. But cool tech.
Impossible outright? No. Not possible currently? Most definitely.
God damnit, Donut!
Edit : Great day to discover !dungeoncrawlercarl@lemmy.ca exists!
I love it but you spelt damnit wrong
New achievement. You’ve been mentioned on a comment on Lemmy.
I’m shocked, I tell you. SHOCKED!
That’s the electricity in action.
Where can I buy this?
I’m surprised like the people who Trump fucked over when they voted for him for the second time
Third time for a lot of them.
Not by this thing, you’re not.
Who knew donuts had holes?
Well we all had high hopes, but if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.
And Elon or Sam are probably hyping it.
Dammit
Somebody got some splainin’ to do.
