[Dockson]

This doesn't really follow the usual battery scam pattern, does it?

Like, EEStor or Nikola with big claims, timelines pushed years out, raise a ton of money, delay forever. Donut announced at CES and said bikes ship Q1 2026 which is weeks from now. They've raised ~€25M total (QuantumScape has burned through $1.5B+). And apparently they're not doing a big fundraise right now either.

If it's a scam it seems like a really bad strategy? You're basically setting a timer on your own credibility.

I've been reading around and the thing I keep landing on is the Nordic Nano connection. They're a Finnish nanotech company Donut invested in, and they published specs for a "bipolar electrostatic capacitor" with basically identical numbers - 400 Wh/kg, 100k cycles, fireproof. Does anyone with more battery knowledge know if this could be some kind of supercapacitor hybrid being marketed as a solid-state battery? The VTT report confirms fast charging works but doesn't say anything about energy density, cycle life, or what this thing actually is.

Seems like the energy density and cycle life reports (supposedly coming in the next few weeks) are going to be way more interesting than this one.

[Hamuko]

Yeah, if it's a scam, at least we don't have to worry about it for too long. If we don't have third-party test results and/or the bikes in testers' hands in the next 37 days, then we can be pretty sure that it's just bogus.

[skrebbel]

I really want this to be true, but the founder launching AGI 9 months ago doesn't help their credibility a lot. And drip-marketing test results seems like a super weird thing to do, whether it's real or it's not.

Don't forget that a lot of scams aren't initially on purpose. Eg Theranos by all accounts very gradually morphed from a mild "fake it till you make it" scheme (mild by Silicon Valley standards at least) into a full-blown scam over years of growth and funding, the lies needing to be deeper and deeper over time to cover up the earlier ones.

I guess all I'm trying to say is the fact that it's a bad strategy for a scam, doesn't really mean it's not a scam.

Those Verge motorcycles appear to actually exist and work though, so that's a data point in favour of this being real.

[mrtksn]

> the founder launching AGI 9 months ago

Yes, I want this too good to be true battery to be real and that's why I'm looking into such things but this claim is false.

He apparently launched "Artificially Superintelligence", which appears to be a marketing term for some architecture this company was working on. The "AGI" term seems to come from people who are going after this CEO.

I wasn't able to come up with people who claim that they were actually scammed, i.e. paid for a product that wasn't delivered or made an investment into something that doesn't exist.

This appears to be a much cleaner slate than the titans of AI. I'm inclined to believe that those alleged scams are not scams by SV standard.

[szmarczak]

> I wasn't able to come up with people who claim that they were actually scammed, i.e. paid for a product that wasn't delivered or made an investment into something that doesn't exist.

I'm gonna ask the other way around. Name one successful product by the CEO that has reached mass production and you can get it right now.

[jusssi]

Well, AppGyver was real. SAP bought it, it's now called SAP Build.

Don't know how successful it was/is as a product though.

[szmarczak]

See my other comment [1]. There's dozen of failed products. That one AppGyver product is from 15 years ago. Since then, he hasn't created any other product. The motorcycle however is real. The battery may also be. The issue with Solid State Batteries is that it's almost impossible to scale them.

The guy changes the industry he's in as often to match what's currently popular.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47129369

[mrtksn]

Failed startup isn’t a scam, to be a scam it needs to be presented in a way that is designed to collect money but that money be used for something else.

Otherwise YC would have been scam center, very few of YC companies don’t fail.

[mrtksn]

That’s ridiculous, neither making your first product nor failing is scamming.

In this particular case you can buy motorbikes and sport cars made using electric motors from the same company that makes this battery. So at least 1 real product that I know of.

[szmarczak]

You cannot buy them. Have you visited their website? The way this works, you pay a non-refundable fee. And if this motorcycle turns out to be real, then you get to pay the rest amount (or cancel and lose some money). Because they manufactured a few units doesn't mean it's scalable (or profitable).

[mrtksn]

The motorbikes are not new, there are people who bought them and are using them. Switching to the new battery is new but those bikes with motors from this company exist. I think you need to do your research before arguing further.

[szmarczak]

I don't think you're going to see investors crashing out on the internet that they got scammed. The ASI video by the CEO shows exactly that he has no idea what's happening. Seems like an investor pitch scam. I wish that the battery was true tho. It's always amazing to see progress in the world.

[mrtksn]

scammed investors sue scammers all the times. I don’t know why you believe otherwise.

[szmarczak]

I never said that. If I did, prove me by quoting me.

This aside, all I said is that you don't get to hear that on the internet, because such stuff is unpopular and doesn't usually bring attention. And if they signed an NDA, the lawsuit may be not public.

[szmarczak]

Have you seen his comments on LinkedIn? Doesn't seem like the type of guy who's honest. He kept covering behind "send an rfq" or "sign an nda" or "we're a business not a newspaper" instead of proving anything. Also, here's some products that weren't delivered: - https://burstlive.io/ - https://stingbase.com/ - https://venturebonsai.com/ - https://shadowcapital.com/ - https://kaseygroup.com/ - https://www.definancetechnologies.com/

All links were obtained from the CEO's LinkedIn page. The last one is definitely a scam. They ask for your money and promise that their magical algorithm will give you profit.

The first one has fake "featured in", Privacy Policy does not exist and almost all those websites were using Wordpress (perhaps made by the same guy?).

I don't think you actually did research on him.

[mrtksn]

Any examples of scammed people? lawsuits?

Failed startups aren’t scams by default. You need someone who not only lost their money but lost it because they were misled.

[szmarczak]

I don't need a lawsuit to know that the latter is a Ponzi scheme. If you don't think so, feel free to try it out, not a financial advice tho.

[mrtksn]

You are free to have opinions

[qingcharles]

The founder reminds me of Kim "Dotcom", which worries me. I hope this thing is legit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom

[PoignardAzur]

> Does anyone with more battery knowledge know if this could be some kind of supercapacitor hybrid being marketed as a solid-state battery?

A few Youtubers have pushed the "if it's not a scam, it's probably a novel capacitor" hypothesis, but in their video announcing this test series last weekend, Donut Labs claimed "it's not a capacitor", so I don't know what's going on.