DONUT Labs Missed Every Date They Said and Vanished

It's time for an update on the Donut Lab

situation because it has been very very

quiet since their last round of data

pushing. However, if you look deeper,

stuff has happened. So, Donut Lab made

huge claims. Now, we're sort of waiting

for something to come to the the front

here. I think it's fair to say that

Donut Lab achieved something

allegedly quite impressive early this

year. They managed to get the entire

world in the EV world anyway talking

about a company that nobody's ever heard

of with nine apparently nine staff

working for including a

battery chemist. At CES, they

effectively stood on stage and basically

just said that they solved uh

solid-state batteries. Even though

there's 120,000 people working for CATL

and they've not completely cracked it,

you know? So, that's a very significant

deal. They've talked about 400 Wh/kg

5-minute charging 100,000 I think it was

100,000 charge cycles, yeah?

Operation from minus 30° C to 100° C,

which is you know, apparently perfectly

fine. Lower costs than lithium-ion

batteries and perhaps the most important

claim of all was that it's in

production. It's not a prototype. It's

going into production within the next

few months in Q1 of this year. That

deadline did pass by the way and

we can't buy one still, of course.

So, yeah, now it's the first week in

June 2026. What do we actually have and

what has happened? So, I'll get into it

a bit more at the end, but for now, we

have press releases. We've got some

interviews on the internet. We've got

the CEO

talking about it. We have YouTube

videos. We've got independent tests

from Finland that support certain parts

of the technology even though that it

supports certain parts of the

technology, which we didn't ask about,

but what we still don't have is

independent verification of the claims

that would genuinely change the battery

industry.

Where is the independently verified 400

Wh/kg figure? Where is that? And where

is the verified 100,000

cycle lifespan? Where is that?

Where are the production motorcycles

being delivered in meaningful numbers?

Where is the tangible evidence that

would convince, you know, LG Energy,

uh CATL, BYD,

uh Samsung SDI, Panasonic

that this changed everything. Where is

that? Those are still open questions, I

think. And I think that's the

distinction people often miss. CATL

doesn't announce a battery and then just

simply ask us to believe. They literally

just give evidence. They prove it. It's

always highly evidenced. CATL announces

a battery and then 3 months later we see

it in a vehicle.

Uh BYD

uh you know, announces a battery and

then it appears

in hundreds of thousands of cars. The

product product eventually speaks for

itself. But with uh this situation with

Donut Lab, we're still largely in a

stage where they've, you know, the

company's just speaking about a product

on stage, publicly avowing things, but

it's not really happening. So, some of

the independent testing suggests there

may well be something genuinely

interesting happening here, but

extraordinary claims, literally, they

really do require extraordinary

evidence, like I said before. And when

you tell the world that you've

effectively solved the uh one of the

biggest challenges in battery

technology, people are going to expect

more than just a presentation and uh

promises or even a video posted to your

socials with a man with a camo hat on.

Uh they're going to expect products,

basically. And they're going to expect

data and proof.

So, I think it's fair to say that many

of the people who were skeptical back in

January, back in February, even back

last year when they were asking for

money during seed runs and they're

trying to get some money,

I think it was Was it in January?

They haven't been proven wrong yet. And

equally, Donut Lab hasn't been proven

wrong, either. So, there has been an

eerie silence until

we see independently verified energy

density figures by a company that we we

which was not paid money to give some

data publicly.

>> [gasps]

>> Uh independently verified cycle life

figures and real products that we can

just go test drive with the batteries in

reaching customers maybe maybe a hundred

of them, maybe a thousand of them at

some sort of meaningful scale. And I

think skepticism remains completely

justified until that happens. That's not

being anti-innovation or anything, but I

think it's just reasonable given what we

know.

That's simply applying the same standard

that we've, you know, we'd apply to

every battery company on earth whether

it be

Chinese BYD, Chinese CATL, QuantumScape,

you know, we've got a couple of others

around the world.

Or whether it be Donut in Finland. The

battery industry has seen plenty of

amazing claims over the last five, six,

seven years. The winners are are usually

the companies that eventually just

deliver something, usually. And that's

the part of the story that we're still

waiting to see. So, does anybody expect

to see it? Probably not. Of course, I

don't think most people these days at

least 50% of the people I'm going to

guess are not do not believe that

they're ever going to see this.

I think it was made very very clear in

my recent videos that they are likely

after some money. 15 million euros of

funding was announced in February 2025,

although the company said the money had

actually been raised during 2024

alongside Donut Lab 25 million euros

seed round. So, they asked for people to

privately invest which was announced in

July 2025. I suspect that in January

this year when they come out with the

new data figures at some point this year

they're going to ask for some more money

and and you can even invest a little

bit.

So, perhaps that's to come. I don't

know. As as it is right now, as of the

5th of June, no, hasn't happened. The

biggest thing going on is not a new

battery announcement. It's actually the

fact that we're now past several of the

Donut

Labs

of of their own timelines, basically. At

CES in January, Donut Labs said Verge

Motorcycles with the new battery would

be on sale. It would be on the road in

Q1 this year. You can go buy one.

Obviously, that's not happened. They

talked about production-ready batteries.

Uh

current production capacity, they also

talked about real-world deployment, and

been you know, selling the batteries

globally. We are now in June, and there

has been no widely publicized

independent review, customer delivery

campaign, large-scale real-world

validation of the headline claims, or

any of the basic ones like 400 W h per

kilo.

Donut Lab has basically spent the last

few months proving things that critics

were not actually asking about, and

largely not even curious about. So, some

things we wanted to know are

uh to start with, is the battery

density? Is it 400 W h per kilo? Is that

true? Can it really do 100,000 cycles

and still be reasonably usable after

that? Are product production vehicles

actually going to be delivered this

year?

What are your thoughts? Feel free to

write in the comments. You can say

anything you like. Thank you so much to

these people who are the channel

members. Uh really appreciate that. And

uh yeah, thank you so much. And also, uh

I will be um

there is a link on my uh Buy Me a Coffee

page. So, you're a very welcome to book

a one-on-one consultation with me if you

want help talking about your next car

purchase, or uh battery storage systems,

things like that for your house, or

solar.

You're very welcome to do that. It will

move eventually from Buy Me a Coffee on

the website there to the website. So,

thank you so much, and uh I appreciate

your time.

Edinburgh is really beautiful. Always

like coming back to Edinburgh.

Such a nice place.

And I found easy easy parking, which is

lovely.

>> [applause]

>> Spent the last few days in London

and Hyde Park.

I've just been to Hyde Park today for

the last couple of hours today.

Stunning. What an absolute gem London

is.

In the midst of all the

bad press

that it gets.

It is beautiful. It really is, you know.

Stunning place.

A lot of happy people.

And very beautiful. Lovely parks.