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Solid state battery a scam?

Imagine a battery that stores 400 watt-hours per Kg, can be fully recharged in just five minutes and offers a life of over 100,000 charge cycles.

Sounds almost too good to be true, right?

Well these are the claims being made for what is touted as a revolutionary new break-through solid-state technology that, if true, could change the world of electric surface and air vehicles forever.

However, there are a lot of warning bells sounding.

The claims are being made by a company called Donut Lab and really do have that "too good to be true" ring to them.

Unlike traditional lithium-ion batteries that use liquid electrolytes, solid state batteries rely on a solid electrolyte that, in theory, bring a wealth of advantages, not the least of which is massively improved safety.

When liquid electrolytes break down under physical, thermal or electrical stress, they tend to produce highly flamable gasses that make battery fires hard to control and prone to "runaway" events. This is where the loss of thermal control within a single cell can quickly spread to the remainder of a battery pack in a violent and uncontrolled fashion.

Proponents of solid state batteries claim they are immune to destructive failures and there are even demonstrations of nails being hammered through such cells with no resulting fires or violent venting of gasses.

So why the skepticism regarding this new product from Donut Lab?

Well many extremely well-funded research teams, backed by major players such as Toyota, have been working on producing a practical solid state battery for quite some time, with little to show thus far for their efforts.

Donut Labs had a display stand at CES last week but all that was on show were some empty 3D-printed shells -- no actual batteries. Why not?

Speculation is rife that this is just another of those announcements that will eventually result in nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Over the decades I've seen a lot of "breakthrough battery technology" annoucements that promise the earth but end up delivering a tiny handful of dirt. Almost without exception such annoucements are made by researchers who are about 80 percent of the way there and think that the next 20 percent will take just 20 percent of the total time.

As anyone with "real world experience" will tell you, even the last 10 percent of any tech development project can take more than 90 percent of the time because that's when the hardest of all problems tend to arise.

Another alternative is that it's just a scam, plain and simple.

Apparently the guy behind this battery has been known to make unsubstantiated claims in the past, as revealed in this video:

With so many industries hanging out for "the next big thing" in batteries to make their plans practical, anyone who comes along claiming to be ready to go will be in big demand and I dare say a fair amount of money could be headed their way. That's because many things such as electric flying cars, electric aircraft and other concepts that are presently nowhere near commercially viable, may well become "a thing" if batteries with the performance claimed by Donut Lab become a reality.

Do *I* think it's a scam?

Well colour me skeptical at this point in time. Wait for delivery targets (presently Q1 of 2026) to be missed and timelines become stretched out for years.

However, only time will tell for sure.

Carpe Diem folks!

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