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
Ah…the Theranos business plan.
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…
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.
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.
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.
I mean these days with all the hyped up scams all over social media including Lemmy… yeah?
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.
take my money, fellow human! :)
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.
sure, because everything on Youtube is real.
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)
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.
Who knew donuts had holes?
Somebody got some splainin’ to do.
Dammit
Of course it is. If you had the technology to create a revolutionary battery, you wouldn’t waste time with the motorcycle business.
You actually might. Motorcycles are a perfect use case for an energy dense battery technology because current ones are simply too heavy with not enough range to make them viable.
Still, the inventor of cold fusion wouldn’t be also making refrigerators and TVs that will use the power.
I think he’s suggesting that inventing groundbreaking technology is the purview of brilliant scientific work. Applying that science is the purview of merely smart scientific work and is also a different industrial sector. this technology would be useful for motorcycles, sure, but it would also be useful for thousands or more other industries, many infinitely more lucrative, like aerospace, transportation, remote research, energy production/storage, computing, and on and on. Then there’s the near-infinite consumer applications.
It does seem weird that the same people with the ambition to improve on a major scientific technological barrier would do so for the dramatically less ambitious goal of advancing leisure motorsports.
There’s all kinds of red flags that Donut put out, but I disagree that motorcycles were one of them. There were plenty of people like me watching it that thought electric motorcycles were a brilliant first use of the supposed tech breakthrough -semi trucks would be an excellent choice too - and took that as a green flag. It’s really not as random as you think.
Cars got electrified, nobody in 2026 looks at the EV industries success and thinks “what a bad idea”, and plenty of motorcycle companies are like, “we could do that too” but then look into the physics and realize they could only do it badly. The first ones to market that do it well when new battery tech comes out will make a fortune, so it didn’t surprise me in the least that if a magical battery with all the pros and non of the cons got released someone would make electric motorcycles with it on day 1.
That being said, if you live in the west and drive an SUV and your view is that they are dangerous toys for teens and criminals then ya I get why you think it’s equivalent to cold fusion being used in a fridge. The rest of the world, esp Asia leverages motorcycles and scooters like primary transportation devices and they sell like hotcakes.
Cars got electrified, nobody in 2026 looks at the EV industries success and thinks “what a bad idea”
But plenty of people in the late 90s did when the EV-1 came out with its lead-acid and later NiMH batteries. Modern EV battery tech wasn’t built for EVs, it was built for general applications, worked its way into consumer electronics and then from there into EVs. In fact, many modern EV batteries are made up of 18650 cells which were first used in laptops.
The Donut labs thing would make sense if they were also spinning off an energy company and just using the motorcycle business to get attention. Tesla and Ford have already successfully spun off energy branches though in their case it’s more to take advantage of their production capacity over any major leap in battery tech.
Random link says global motorcycle sales are $174 billion.
https://www.freedoniagroup.com/industry-study/global-motorcycles
Ford motor company sold $183 billion in 2025 alone.
Motorcycles are just such a small market compared to the application space for a high performance EV battery. It makes no sense to limit a new battery to that.
Well said and my sentiments exactly, thank you.
It isn’t that awesome batteries wouldn’t be great for electric bikes, it is that they’d be so great and game-changing for so many much bigger things too that it is hard to imagine a technological breakthrough on batteries that many markets are dying for, including massive ones way bigger than bikes, to come from some upstart motorcycle company when literal 1st-world nations have been working on it for ages makes me skeptical. Brilliant heavily-funded labs around the world could not figure it out, but these guys do? Possible, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Well, prior to this, Donut lost most of their host for the YT channel. I’m guessing they saw the writing on the wall and left.
