Donut Lab translated article FIXED

Insider: Donut Lab has made too many promises
The key promises of Donut Lab, which is marketing a miracle battery, are not true, says the partner's director Lauri Peltola. He has filed a criminal report against Donut Lab. According to Donut Lab CEO Marko Lehtimäki, the promises about the battery are true.

Niclas Storås HS11:20
Lauri Peltola (left) is the commercial director of Nordic Nano Group. Nordic Nano is a partner for Donut Lab, which is led by Marko Lehtimäki (right). Photo: Outi Pyhäranta / HS and Mika Ranta / HS
The key promises of the technology company Donut Lab about the world-changing battery are not true, says Lauri Peltola, the commercial director of the company's partner Nordic Nano Group.

He says he has filed a criminal report against Donut Lab, which is related to misleading communications and empty promises.

Donut Lab, registered in Estonia by Finnish founders, presented a solid-state battery at the CES trade fair in Las Vegas in January, which it markets as revolutionary.

Donut Lab has tested its battery in the VTT laboratory. Photo: Donut Lab

Donut Lab has marketed itself as an investment target in the beginning of the year, and in addition to technical promises, presented wild predictions about the growth of production and turnover in investment materials.

Donut Lab's key promises include, for example, the battery's exceptional energy density (400 Wh/kg) and the fact that the battery can withstand up to 100,000 charges and discharges. In January, Donut Lab CEO Marko Lehtimäki announced that the company is already capable of manufacturing batteries worth one gigawatt per year.

According to HS, Donut Lab's batteries were to be manufactured at the premises of the Finnish Nordic Nano Group in Imatra. Nordic Nano is a technology company founded in 2024.

According to Lauri Peltola, he has learned over the spring that the promised battery properties, such as energy density and charging cycles, have not been achieved. He also says that the mass production readiness has been misrepresented.

According to Peltola, the company does not have the promised capacity for serial production of batteries and large production volumes. He says that the production line is not scheduled to be completed until later this year and its manufacturing capacity is not as large as Lehtimäki claims.

“I want to emphasize that these are really serious matters. Donut Lab’s operations do not match my own moral concept,” Peltola says.

According to him, the Donut Lab collaboration has begun to disrupt Nordic Nano Group’s other business operations. The company’s production facility can manufacture solar panels, for example.

Nordic Nano Group’s Commercial Director Lauri Peltola says that Donut Lab’s operations do not match his moral concept. Photo: Outi Pyhäranta / HS

Peltola is one of the founding partners of Nordic Nano. He says he filed the criminal report independently and at his own discretion. Donut Lab also owns shares in Nordic Nano.

Nordic Nano Group CEO Esa Parjanen tells HS Visio that Peltola's claims do not represent the company's view and Peltola is not involved in the battery team.

According to him, mass production readiness will be reached this year. He does not comment further on the size of the production capacity.

Helsinki Police confirms that a criminal report was filed against a company related to battery technology in April.

Peltola says that he also filed a report against Donut Lab with the Financial Supervisory Authority and the Chancellor of Justice's external reporting channel.

The Chancellor of Justice's whistleblower protection provides protection for those who report misconduct. For example, they cannot be dismissed during investigations.

Donut Lab CEO Marko Lehtimäki says that he is not aware of the criminal report and that the police have not been in contact with the company.

"We naturally take such matters very seriously," Lehtimäki states.

He sticks to his previous promises and assures that no one has been cheated.

At the end of the story, Lehtimäki answers HS Visio's questions in more detail.

HS Visio has previously stated that Donut Lab's battery technology comes from a small German company called CT-Coating. Donut Lab itself has not made this public.

HS Visio has seen email correspondence between Donut Lab, CT-Coating and Nordic Nano Group from the end of March. The content of the correspondence supports Peltola's claims that at least some of Donut Lab's promises have been misleading or exaggerated.

The emails give the impression that Donut Lab's battery technology relies entirely on CT-Coating. The division of labor is roughly that CT-Coating develops the technology, Nordic Nano is responsible for battery production, and Donut Lab acts as a productizer and commercializer of the technology.

In the emails, Donut Lab asks CT-Coating for measurement results that would match the promises made to investors and customers regarding the charging rates. These were not provided, according to the emails.

It seems that the cooperation between the companies is not entirely straightforward. A CT-Coating representative complains, among other things, that the messages of the battery announcement in Las Vegas were not all agreed upon together.

The correspondence shows that CT-Coating has stopped product development of the previous battery. Apparently, this is the battery that Donut Lab presented in January and that has been tested in the VTT laboratory.

All of CT-Coating's product development is now focused on developing a new type of battery. In emails at the end of March, Donut Lab asked when it would be able to conduct the first tests.

In a video published in early April, Donut Lab's Marko Lehtimäki announced that the company is coming out with a battery version 2.0, which is even better than the previous battery.

CT-Coating's new battery technology is therefore still in the development phase. Therefore, Donut Lab or Nordic Nano cannot even order all the equipment needed for production yet, and it takes time to receive them after the order has been placed.

The German research institute SGS tested prototypes of the battery developed by CT-Coating in 2024. The energy density of the CT-Coating battery was measured at 268–297 Wh/kg. The energy density of the best commercially available batteries is currently around 300 Wh/kg.

Miracle batteries have been developed and promised for decades. The industry has coined the term “valley of death” to describe how difficult it is to bring a battery developed in laboratory conditions to production.

Battery materials can behave differently on a mass production line than in a development laboratory. The cost of series production also creates a particular challenge.

Solid-state batteries have not been able to be mass-produced profitably.

For example, Toyota has about 2,000 patents related to solid-state batteries, but the company has not been able to build a profitable production line for them.

Donut Lab’s batteries are to be used in electric motorcycles from Verge Motorcycles, among others. Verge is part of the same group of companies as Donut Lab.

Marko Lehtimäki previously promised that Verge's new motorcycles equipped with solid-state batteries will roll off the production line during the first quarter of the year. It is known that at least one motorcycle was completed at the Estonian factory in late March.

In February, Verge Motorcycles CEO Tuomo Lehtimäki told Kauppalehti that Verge Motorcycles will be able to manufacture 350 motorcycles this year. Tuomo Lehtimäki is Marko Lehtimäki's brother.

In April, the company released a video in which it said that for now, motorcycles can only be manufactured at a rate of one bike per week. The plan is to speed up production to one bike per day later.

Since the battery announcement, Donut Lab has marketed itself as an investment target and prepared a share issue. In the material presented to investors, Donut Lab's value is determined at 1.25 billion euros.

Lehtimäki says that the company immediately stopped trading convertible bonds when public doubts arose about the technology Donut Lab presented. According to him, there has been no investment opportunity in the company for three months.

According to HS Vision, investor meetings have been held at least in late January and February.

According to what investors were told, the company would sell 260 megawatts of batteries this year and over 7,000 megawatts next year. The company also predicted that revenue would grow to the billion-dollar level in 2028.

If what investors were told is true, Donut Lab has managed to overcome the death valley of battery production.

Throughout the spring, Donut Lab has been running an exceptional marketing campaign. The company publishes additional information about the battery approximately every week.

The first marketing videos dealt with tests commissioned from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The marketing videos have featured the company's frontman Marko Lehtimäki and CTO Ville Piippo.

The information published so far has not proven that the key claims, such as an energy density of 400 Wh/kg or a durability of 100,000 charging cycles, are true. It is unclear whether they have even been tested by VTT.

The three latest videos no longer present VTT test results.

Several battery experts have dismissed the claimed properties of Donut Lab's battery as impossible from a chemical and physical point of view. If they were true, the invention could even be worthy of a Nobel Prize.

Until now, Donut Lab's CEO Marko Lehtimäki has selectively answered media interviews about the company's battery technology. Now he answered HS Vision's questions by phone.

Are these claims true that your battery has an energy density of 400 Wh/kg and can withstand 100,000 charging cycles?

"Yes, the battery that is sold to our customers has 400 watt-hours per kilogram."

And will it be able to perform fast charging according to the VTT test?

“Yes, yes. 100,000 cycles has been extrapolated from lower numbers. It is completely industry practice to project cycles. No one has done a hundred thousand cycles.”

And what about manufacturing capacity, is there one?

“We have a ramp-up this year. The goal is to get to the one gigawatt class. That will happen this year.”

I watched a video on YouTube today where you said at CES that you already have a one gigawatt manufacturing capacity.

“The wording can be understood in different ways or something similar. We will reach a gigawatt-class run-rate this year.”

In January, you said that the new solid-state batteries are already available today.

“There have been some. Prätka was already in the works at that time. Prätka is a fairly low-volume product, so let’s start with that.”

Your partner has filed a criminal complaint against you.

“Okay, I don’t know what it’s all about.”

It’s about the alleged energy density, cycles and manufacturing capacity, they have promised too much.

“What we are delivering to customers, that battery has an energy density of 400 Wh/kg.”

Have you already delivered them to customers?

“There have been no 400 Wh/kg batteries delivered to customers.”

When are you planning to do it?

“In the very near future.”

What does that mean?

“Let’s get into some details. In the near future.”

In January, you promised that the batteries would be available immediately.

“We may have cells with different specs that have been delivered to customers. The volume that we are delivering from a large production line corresponds to what we have announced.”

Where are the batteries manufactured?

“We have our own pre-production equipment in Finland. When we go into mass production, we will be in the Nordics and Baltics.”

Apparently your technology comes from CT-Coating in Germany?

“I don’t comment on such rumors.”

You can’t confirm that CT-Coating is the party.

“No.”

How is your cooperation with Nordic Nano Group going?

“The cooperation with them is going very well.”

According to our information, you have promised things too far in advance and your promises are not entirely true.

“Now we have to remember that what we will deliver to the customer and what individual cells we have tested at VTT, for example, are not necessarily the same thing.”

Isn’t there a slight contradiction in that you have different cells that you deliver to customers and different cells from where you obtain the test results?

“I won’t comment in depth now. We will open up all the issues here.”

You just said that you will send different cells to VTT and different cells to customers, so wouldn’t that be worth it…

”I haven’t said that exactly. What I’m saying is that there are use cases where a certain cell may be suitable and another one may not be. We will have more information about this in the coming weeks, whether there are different cell generations. It is completely normal for manufacturers to have different cell sizes.”

“We have tested the cells that are in the Verge’s press. It is true that they are solid-state cells that are in use. They are the ones that have been tested at VTT. Then there are other cells that will be brought to customers.”

Your launch method is exceptional. Do you want to open up and explain why you have chosen this method of release?

“There are intellectual property and patent issues and all sorts of things, where certain technologies may not be open and all that kind of thing.”

So you want to sell the product before it is ready?

“No, no, not at all. That is not what it is about.”

Do you want to raise money before it is ready?

“No. Now you... well, I don’t know why this prejudice.”

My job is to ask the hard questions. If I don’t ask, our readers will. And now you have the opportunity to answer them completely directly.

“We’ve figured out that CES is a good place to launch a battery product.

Since we announced the battery, there have been at least a dozen solid-state battery announcements. They haven’t shared any third-party confirmations. We’ve gone pretty far in making videos.

Mostly for our customers and potential employees. Yes, our naive idea was that when people found out that the battery would be in vehicles (Verge’s motorcycles) in the near future, they would stop talking about it being just marketing.

You said it was a naive idea. Why?

“Now later, when you see how things have gone, maybe it was naive.”

When will we get information about energy density? That’s what everyone here is waiting for.

“We have a very clear idea in our heads about what and when to announce. These are multidimensional things, this launching of revolutionary technologies. It is true that the Verge has a solid-state battery in its packaging, and it is true that 400Wh/kg solid-state batteries, manufactured on our production line, will be delivered to customers this year.”