n3m37hDonut Labs released VTT's independant test results!
Man if this is actually real it wi be crazy. I’m waiting for some crazy limitation to be discovered.
earthwormPlease don’t make the post link go straight to a file.
Weirds me out when I think I’m going to a website and suddenly it’s asking where I want to download to.
Sorry but there is only a PDF of the results, ill go make a website just so you and the 8 other people aren’t weirded out by a PDF…
No worries. I found it for you. This looks like the original website you could have linked.
I think the “it retains 98% charge” quote might be misleading. Thats true for the capacity (in Ah), but not for the energy (in Wh). The report shows this clearly in the tables:
Efficiency is about 83% if my math is right (which is still good).
Last paragraph
Under the specified test conditions, the cell was successfully charged at 5C for more than 9 minutes, and 100 % of the charged capacity was available during the subsequent discharge. The cell was also successfully charged at 11C for more than 3 minutes, with 98.4–99.6 % of the charged capacity available after a full charge.
This result matches largely with the startups claims. Given what they tested, cycle times and aging are largely unknown and thermal management requirements are quite high for fast charging, this results in problems with packing, aging and charge losses. Its a nice first step, but there is a ways to go until market readiness IMHO.
I’m something of an electrical engineer but not a battery expert by any means.
If it’s truly a solid-state battery, thermal management is less of an issue since they won’t be limited to the usual -10 - 60 °C range which makes it easier to dissipate heat into the environment.
What makes me suspicious is that they claimed that the battery can operate at/above 100 °C safely without degradation, but in the 11C charging test they paused it because the temperature had reached 90 °C.
So, a guy with a PHD thesis on solid state batteries is saying that these results are not as promised
Testing The World's First Solid-State Battery
As someone in the industry, I unfortunately highly doubt that the battery is real, at least in the way that they say it is. Individually, all of the claimed specs are within the realm of possibility, but combining all of them in one cell that supposedly does not contain lithium and is cheap to produce? Extremely unlikely.
What I suspect is that they have one or a few expensive laboratory-made cells that fulfill at least the performance claims so they can raise interest, but which are in no way possible to produce at a reasonable price point.
I just cant see how this scam is to work with buddy getting ahead if it is fake. We know what happened with Theranos, you never get away with defrauding billionaires or companies. With a technology like this once an OEM will most def test the battery before putting it into a commercial vehicle.
Depends on on what they’re trying to convince people of. I see a few options:
They believe they are close to a breakthrough and just need a little bit more funding to get all the way there. I don’t see this as likely because then they wouldn’t have come out with such extraordinary claims straight out of the gate.
They want to fool potential customers into buying their products. Also not likely for the same reason you said, no one is going to include a product into their production line without verifying things first.
They want to fool investors into buying the company. This is what I think is going on, they want enough breadcrumbs so that people who want to come out to ahead of the big players (CATL, QuantumScape, Solid Power) will let their fear of missing out outweigh their skepticism will go all-in, then just cash out before anyone realizes it was a bluff.