World's First 'Production-Ready' Solid-State Battery Just Proved Its 7-Minute Promise

Major automakers like Toyota and Volkswagen are working on the batteries, but the technology perpetually feels like it is just a few years away. Now, a company from Finland has demonstrated that solid-state batteries could be ready for prime time much sooner than expected.

Charging As Fast As Filling Up
After unveiling a breakthrough electric motor a year ago, claimed to weigh just 88 pounds yet deliver 845 horsepower, Donut Lab has followed up with a solid-state battery cell it says is production ready. To prove this isn’t just talk, the company teamed up with Finland’s government-backed research institute VTT for some testing, and the results are promising.

According to the tests, Donut Lab’s solid-state cell, dubbed the Donut Battery, charged from zero to 80% in just four and a half minutes and hit 100% in a little over seven. When discharged after a full charge, 98.4 to 99.6% of the stored energy was available, which matches the company’s claims when the battery debuted at last month’s CES.

Those speeds alone are impressive, but the Donut Battery also shines for its inherent stability. Unlike other solid-state cells, it doesn’t rely on complex active cooling systems and separate clamping systems designed to prevent the internal materials from separating and derailing chemical reactions. Donut Lab says the cell performs as expected with just two sets of passive aluminum cooling plates – and even when one set was removed during testing, which the company described as a worst-case scenario, the cell still charged quickly.

Donut Lab has described its battery cell as production ready, but plenty of startups have made similar claims backed by equally glowing lab results, as well as some major automakers. The real hurdle remains scaling a solid-state battery to the levels required for the automotive industry. Until we see this technology inside an actual vehicle on sale, we simply can’t be 100% certain how it will perform in the real world.

Donut Lab has also noted that this recent test doesn’t directly simulate how the cell might behave when integrated into a full battery pack with multiple other cells. The company also emphasized that this is just an initial test, signaling that there’s still a lot of development work ahead before the Donut Battery could hit the road.

When the battery finally enters production, one of its first real-world applications could be on two wheels rather than four. Donut Lab, which was spun off from Verge Motorcycles, already has its in-wheel motors powering some of Verge's electric motorcycles like the TS Pro.