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bayesianbottoday at 12:45 PM3 repliesview on HN

Feels quite clear Donut doesn't have much - no meaningful new tests released for many weeks already and some executive of Nordic Nano sued Donut Lab and said their claims were misleading.

I haven't really followed that closely myself, but I've noticed the people who I saw defending Donut before have gone really quiet about it lately.


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audunwtoday at 2:10 PM

I find the talk around Donut so weird. At CES we were told they had nothing because they hadn’t shared third party test. They then shared third party tests remarkably fast. From the dating of VTT reports it’s clear they shared it as soon as VTT finalised their reports. Now they have nothing because they haven’t released enough tests fast enough?

It’s clear they have something very interesting.

We’re mainly missing low temp and energy density test. If they have something real, obviously they’re saving density for last (near the time real customers get their hand on the bike), since it will give them huge amount of attention. Can’t fault them for milking what they’ve got (if they got it) for all the marketing hype it’s worth.

We’re also missing cycle life test but the claims can’t really be fully tested in a reasonable time. So even if their tests show projections that indicate high cycle life, people will doubt it, or shift the focus to ageing effects. So personally I don’t care much, we just have to see how it works out in real life.

The lawsuit incidentally reveal their connection to partners which does reveal that there’s something real there. Another criticism was that the couldn’t have developed all the tech from scratch themselves in such a short time, and now it’s clear they didn’t, they’re using tech licensed by other companies with real competence in the field.

If it’s as good as they say with zero caveats and can be manufactured at scale is another matter

pjc50today at 2:42 PM

It seems clear to me that Donut are a vaporware company with hardly any customers, and CATL are the largest battery company in the world.

yorwbatoday at 1:02 PM

Donut's website claims that they will release the next test result in 7 days, so you can check next week whether those people will have something new to talk about: https://idonutbelieve.com

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