The Miraculous Battery of Donut Lab Could Be a Scam, Independent and In-Depth Investigation Reveals

When last January, at CES in Las Vegas, the CEO of Donut Lab, Marko Lehtimäki, announced that they had a solid-state battery ready for production, everyone in the industry agreed on one aspect: it would revolutionize the sector or it would turn out to be a colossal flop.

Months passed without major news, apart from those released by Donut itself, through the "independent" tests conducted by the VTT institute. The results seemed encouraging, but one doubt always remained: why did VTT never mention the two fundamental specifications, namely a density of over 400 Wh/kg and 100,000 discharge cycles?

These are the same questions that Ryan Inis Hughes raised on his popular YouTube channel Ziroth. According to Hughes, Donut Lab, without beating around the bush, has been the protagonist of a deliberate and calculated deception. Here’s the video of the investigation:

Hughes consulted several experts from the battery world, including Julian Zanau from the Fraunhofer Research Institute, Dr. Yahim San from Justus-Liebig University, Tom Bicha from Leona, and Dr. Yuo Hesca from Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences. The opinion of all scientists is unanimous: it is a common NMC lithium-ion battery, Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt. The experts reached these conclusions by more professionally analyzing the voltage and expansion curves, which seemed to leave no doubt.

Not only that, Hughes also discovered a corporate structure with a complex network of shell companies, making it difficult to trace financial transactions and fundraising. What seems certain is that behind the incriminating cell is CT Coatings, a German company whose background appears too confused for such a revolution. In its portfolio, it holds patents of all kinds, including menu holders and warning triangles. Notable are the words of Julian Zanau from Fraunhofer, who described a meeting with the specialists from CT Coatings: "My first impression was that these people had no idea how a battery worked. They talked about the absence of rare earth metals in their batteries and therefore the absence of lithium, and for any chemist, lithium has nothing to do with rare earth minerals."

The structure was supposed to be as follows: CT Coatings was to be the technology supplier, Nordic Nano would be the manufacturer, and Donut Lab would handle marketing. However, it seems Nordic Nano never produced a single cell.

Thus, the words of Lauri Peltola, former CCO of Nordic Nano, come back into focus, who a few months ago came forward stating (and denouncing) that everything from Donut Lab was falsehoods. Of course, Lehtimäki downplayed it, explaining that Peltola was just an angry ex-employee because he was fired.

Clearly, Donut Lab has the right to reply to all these accusations, but the most alarming aspect of the situation is that the company has already raised over $25 million in investments, most of which comes from small private investors involved through fundraising and crowdfunding. The concrete risk is that they may lose their savings in yet another scam.