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If CATL pulls this off, the safety advantages (fire suppression is same as for fuel burners) will be as momentous as the range advantages. I would consider this kind of EV, where I definitely do not want a conventional BEV in my garage.
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TLDR: The tested battery was likely a lithium ion battery. He notes the possibility that CT-Coatings (sic CT-Coating) told Donut that it was a sodium ion battery.
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It certainly isn’t looking good for Donut. I don’t see how they could hope to get away with the scheme as presented in the video. Verge missed their Q1 deadline and their customers are going to run out of patience soon enough.
The comparison with Elizabeth Holmes is apt, except that she had her looks and her sex going for her; a chubby Finnish guy doesn’t quite have the same allure. My sense is that, unlike Holmes, Donut may have something of value but that they way over-promised on both schedule and performance. For instance, maybe they are using lithium contrary to their claims but they have made some improvements that increase the number of charge cycles and/or decrease the cost. While not quite the revolutionary product they are presenting, it could still be a significant improvement. Holmes never had anything substantial; it was all vaporware.
A couple of red flags about the video itself:
- This guy appears to be in the battery business, hence not an unbiased observer. If any of Donut’s extraordinary claims were true, it would be disruptive in the industry. Incumbents hate disruption.
- He clearly is a shitlib, expressing deep shame for British imperialism and weeping over small investors “losing their life savings” to Donut. Anyone who invests his life savings in an acknowledged high-risk/high-reward venture is a fool. Such investments are for people can afford to lose it all. If someone puts in $25k into Donut, I have to assume that this person is worth >$1M, so taking a $25k hit is no biggie. The fact that this guy doesn’t understand this, or pretends not to understand, says a lot.
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This video is little more than a re-hash of the previous, longer video — even down to the comparison with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Ironically, about 30 seconds after protesting that he has no agenda and nothing to gain by his criticism of Donut comes the request to ‘like and subscribe’ to his channel. In short, this video is engagement farming.
This guy might possibly be even more dishonest than Donut. The jury’s still out on that. At least the first guy had some original material and he might turn out to be right about everything.
Contrast the Donut IP footprint vaporware with this company’s small, but dense, patent application portfolio:
And the answer to the question in the video is that it is more of a semi-solid state.
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Marco’s back:
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Donut has increased the interval. The next video will be 4 weeks from this last one. If that’s the final one, it would be consistent with timing to just beat publication of a patent application publishing on August 13 and having been filed roughly Feb. 6-12, 2025.
Now this. China has imposed restrictions on their nationals with knowledge of battery technology and rare earths from travelling abroad.
Apparently, we cheating Westerners have been poaching experienced Chinese engineers in our attempts to copy & catch up with Chinese technology. As they say, the worm turns. Still, there is no mention of Western Fang Fang-style honeytraps for Chinese engineers – we Westerners have our standards!
“In the past, foreign companies dodged China’s export controls by poaching Chinese engineers, offering them higher pay, green cards and equity to help build identical factories in Vietnam, India or Mexico,” he says. “That path is now closed under the new regulation.”
He adds that the United States and Japanese rare earth separation projects in Australia and Texas have relied on Chinese talent to break purity bottlenecks.
China exit rules tightened to guard rare earth, battery secrets - Asia Times
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