strange-battery.txt

Welcome to the battery doctor's cave sermon. Man, we've got such juicy
material to talk about today, no joke. Our donut lab came out and
published an all solid state battery, a completely solid cell. And
buddy, let me tell you, I've been asked so many times whether this is
real, whether this can actually happen, whether something like this
can come out of Finland, some donut company that's gonna free us all
from misery and be the new Nokia. What would this actually mean? This
solid battery has definitely generated a lot of skepticism in the
media, lots of it. Lots of hope, like yeah, this is definitely going
to happen, this is going to be a huge thing for Finland in the future,
and so on and so forth. So there's been tons of different opinions
about this stuff in the media, and I've read them. And look, it's way
too late at night right now, but I'm still recording this video so I
can get it published as quickly as possible. So let's dive in a bit. I
watched that video. Go ahead and check it out. There's a link down in
the description or at the top of the video. Go watch it if you haven't
already, you probably have by now. And I'll basically go through my
thoughts on what this sparked and whether I believe in it and whether
this could even be possible, that suddenly from Finland we're coming
out with something that really goes into battery technology that
nobody could have possibly expected to suddenly show up from
anywhere. Let's see what the first things are, what this is. Sorry,
this is really low-production video because I spent a ton of time
figuring out and searching for this stuff, but try to bear with me. So
what exactly are these Donut Lab guys promising? The first promise was
400 watt-hours per kilogram. For these new solid state cells. That's
such a number that, in principle, it's completely believable. There's
nothing impossible about it, really. There are already semi-solid
state cells out there that come close, and this is pretty much the
same scale in terms of energy density, which is what all the other
solid state battery manufacturers are aiming for, and many of them
have been much more in the public eye. But even they don't have a
finished product out there yet, or they have prototype samples and
such, but it's still not really fully commercial because
commercializing cells is normally a multi-year project. But yeah, this
energy density, taken at face value, is completely possible with
current chemistry. But it's a good value. Because if it works, it
would make electric trucks super easy. Flying would definitely become
possible in certain applications once we get cells to that level. So
it's true, what was said in that video about these future things. So
if this kind of technology actually shows up, it's going to
revolutionize a lot of new sectors. And when it comes, and actually,
what's the big deal for me personally is that if this technology
actually exists, then basically all other battery technology becomes
pointless. This battery technology that these donut guys are promising
is so much better than anything that any of the Chinese guys have
managed to pull off. Alright, let's move on. So it's completely
solid-state technology. They emphasized that there's nothing liquid in
there, but there was no mention of what chemistry is involved. I've
been wondering myself whether what they're thinking is even a lithium
battery at the core. It could be some other technology, but then again
the video kind of seems to point to lithium, but really it's total
guesswork and honestly the data that's available now is so poor that
it's basically impossible to say what the chemistry would be. The
voltage that they're charging it with in the video is 4.2V, so that
does suggest that it might be some manganese-based or maybe
nickel-based, which could work since they later claim that all
materials are really readily available. What really surprises me here
is that they say it's ready for giga production, but in no official
sources, and I've searched and made my own guesses about who it is,
but in no official sources do they mention who actually stands behind
these cells. Who actually manufactured these cells for the donut lab,
because there definitely needs to be some cell manufacturer, which
they also measure in the video. Because donut lab, they can probably
manage to set up some small place where they can make individual
cells, but having giga-scale manufacturing capacity just ready to go
somewhere, that's definitely not donut lab. They do talk about
collaboration with companies, and they did say that openly, so it's
someone else who does it. Well, that was already mentioned. So,
general materials. What does that even mean? This is marketing
speak. No cobalt, no nickel. Not even lithium? Five-minute
charging. Well, I have that video that shows it, so I've really dug
into it a lot. We'll get back to that. That would be incredibly fast
if that's the case. Then this 100,000 cycles. That's such a number
that, why, why do they have that one too many? They could have just
said 10,000 cycles. That would have been so insane that it would
already be really revolutionary. But actually, wait, excuse me,
100,000, that's basically infinite and it's pretty clear that you
can't get that from any realistic measurement cycles on a cell,
because if it starts counting with one cycle a day, that would take
about 22 years to get 100,000 cycles on that cell. So it's definitely
extrapolated, that number, but they haven't seen any degradation in
that cell. They've dared to say such a huge number. Well, then we have
these strange claims again, like 99% capacity retention from cold to
hot, and that's pretty weird. This would suggest very strongly that
the chemistry behind it isn't the kind of normal Faradaic
electrochemistry, because it's just a fact that temperature has a
direct effect through basic physics on why the internal resistance of
the battery grows when cold and why it's harder to get the same amount
of energy as usable energy out of it, electrical energy in the cold
compared to normal temperatures. There's so little data on that, that
this is just my speculation really, the whole video anyway, what I
personally think about this. And I want to add to this that this video
is not investment advice, so to speak. Don't make any investments
based on what you learn from this video, just make your own
conclusions. But yeah, quite a publication if this holds up. Just the
fact that 400 watt-hours per kilo, completely solid cell and ready for
giga production. What? Just like that. And 100,000 cycles. Like, I
don't even care about the five-minute charging. I'd be fine if it took
an hour to charge, but if it lasts 100,000 cycles, that completely
changes the game, because these should basically be eternal batteries
in a way. The cycles issue is that it practically requires no volume
changes, and the interfaces they can manufacture need to be infinitely
stable, because that's usually where the degradation starts.  But
actually, what was really interesting was that they had this kind of
video in their presentation where they claim they're charging their
cell. And I have screenshots from this video. So what you see in this
video is a Fluke multimeter. It's actually not measuring the voltage
at all here, but rather measuring the temperature, and the
thermocouple is probably there—this is a screenshot, so there's one
live image the whole time from the cell showing where the temperature
is, and on the other side of the display you see a voltage reading of
2.7V, where the cell is initially at the upper cutoff voltage, and a
lot of current is going into the cell right now. And there are the
limits—the upper limit for how many amps can be fed into it is 270
amps and the lower limit is minus 80 amps. So when we start going
through this—at this point I don't know what this shock counter here
is in percent, but whether it's accurate, but it's the only data
source I've had, and I've had to make estimates and calculations based
on this, and hopefully it doesn't deviate too much from reality. So we
know now that the cell, when it's empty, is at 2.7V. Then it starts
charging, and as soon as the current jumps on, there's absolutely
crazy current—270 amps—the voltage jumps to 3.8V when it starts, so
time starts running. There it's constantly counting time. So there was
1.61 seconds. At 5.82 seconds, so about five seconds passed in
between. Then time keeps going more. Uh, 2%, 3.9V already—so the
voltage rose really quickly and really high at 2% shock, 3.9V. This
actually indicates that there's some resistance in the cell. So like,
if you shove that much current into it, it has to behave like this, so
the voltage jumps really high because there are big voltage drops from
this current. Well, then we come to that first kind of starting point
where we have 2% shock. Uh, and what's our voltage now, 3.9V, and 270
amps is currently flowing into the cell. And this is now what confuses
me in this picture. So this device—well, luckily they measured it with
more serious equipment. It's an SM S5000 CP90. So it's this kind of
Delta Electronics bidirectional power supply, which is really suitable
equipment, where you can charge and discharge these batteries. So
really high quality equipment for battery research or for testing
slightly larger modules, which is where that display comes from,
because it's really shown there. So what you can see from this display
is that the Delta device is set to charge at 4.2V with 270 amps. Now
there's something funny here, because this device alone, and seeing
that it's a 90-amp device, we know there have to be three of them in
parallel in this battery lab measurement setup, because otherwise you
couldn't get that 270-amp current out, which is what they're putting
into the cell. What's interesting here is that it's shown here that
this cell is being charged in CV mode. And this is something that
would never normally be done for any regular battery chemistry. So
here they've just directly slammed a 4.2V voltage into the cell and
then this power supply feeds energy into it all the time. So this
270—this would be higher, this current, but then because these three
devices connected in parallel, they're 90 amps each, the maximum
current they can supply at all is that 270 amps. So this 270-amp limit
comes entirely from the measurement setup they have. But in any case,
when a normal battery—I have a picture here of how a normal battery
charges. So a normal NMC or LiPo battery first goes into what's called
constant current mode. So our current is constantly at some fixed
value. Until our cell here reaches the cutoff voltage we want. And
after that, we switch to this CV mode, constant voltage, where we so
to speak float that voltage at some voltage value. And what always
happens as a result of the normal behavior is that the current starts
dropping a lot. And actually that's what we know in normal batteries,
because when the battery is full is that we agree that when this
current value is something like 0.03, then we know we can stop
charging. At that point we know the battery has roughly finished
charging. And this is absolutely absurd in my opinion, to just
directly charge, just throw that battery at 4.2V and push 270 amps
into it. Yeah. Because you don't, you don't normally charge these like
this. So this is more like something that's done to supercapacitors or
old lead-acid batteries. You can charge them just like this, just slap
some high voltage on it and call it a day. Well, then the whole thing
keeps rising. It's important to note now that the temperature of this
voltage isn't really being controlled here, in my opinion, because
they keep openly showing that every time current is pushed into the
cell, the temperature keeps rising here, which you can see all the
time—as the shock rises, the temperature rises and so does the
voltage. Something really interesting happens here in a moment—when
the temperature is still relatively low, the voltage jumps to 4.1V for
a moment, but then when the cell heats up a little bit, the voltage
drops back down to about 4.0V. So this is actually completely normal
behavior for these cells. So when the resistance decreases when the
cell heats up, so to speak the overvoltage also decreases from the
cell, which means that you might get really wild voltage curves from
there because of what happens, especially visible right at that point
when it heats up—normally when you all see voltage curves, it's
usually temperature-controlled, but when the temperature keeps rising
during charging like this. Well then the temperature rises. The shock
keeps rising. 55.9, so 50%, 4.1V voltage and 55.4 or whatever that's
now, five—the temperature already. Well then there's the second and
last point—72%, when the cell jumps for the first time to 4.2 volts,
which you can see in the video. Temperature-wise. And this is now
again where I think something really fishy happens. Uh, I can't
explain what. Uh, and what seems a bit suspicious to me is that
normally with a battery, when, say, it reaches—if we'd pull it into CV
mode and even if we had—well, in principle what happens now is that we
have constant current at 270 amps until the cell should reach that
4.2V voltage, so the current should start dropping according to normal
laws, because this device doesn't set the voltage higher than 4.2. So
then too, the voltage has already risen 10% shock intervals, but here
we still have 4.2V and the same 270 amps is still flowing. So this is
not a complete analysis, because this measurement setup is really
vague—the temperature keeps rising the whole time. Uh, but this is
like cells shouldn't behave like this, that once it's already at the
upper cutoff voltage, it keeps going with the same 270 amps. But
really, there's this temperature effect, and then because we don't
know how accurate that voltage value is when it's only one decimal
place, so this is practically like guesswork—if you needed the second
decimal place, you could deduce much more about how the voltage
actually behaves.  But I think this is really concerning, the way that
cell is behaving in that measurement, because from this you can now
see what a clear picture of it. So this is completely normal,
well-known behavior, that's how it works, so if I look at some point
here, let's say something like this, where we've charged half an
amp-hour in and out of the cell, well basically this is during
discharge, so it has a huge effect on temperature directly on the
voltage. And that's how our normal chemistries behave. And in itself,
like this cell showed that same behavior in that video, because what
happened there in the voltage, when it started charging, when it was
still colder here, it went higher. Then when it warmed up, it dropped
to that 4V range and then it jumped to 4.2 volts. Really, really
strange, because that part there is still something of what we
know. This is pure fact again. We know exactly how it normally behaves
according to the Arrhenius equation and the Putnam model, how these
chemical reactions behave as a function of temperature, if something
like that happens in the cell, it's always this kind of same way. So
when you get cold enough in there, the chemical reactions slow down,
and similarly in warmth they speed up. But this is really, really
strange behavior, which I honestly can't explain just from this video
alone. Especially like this thing, that when it's already at 4.2 volts
and still 270 amps keeps going in the whole time. Well, what else?
Well from these, so from that cold thing, it says there's 99% capacity
even though the battery is like frozen. Well, this picture doesn't
really tell you anything about that. Here it's just the same Fluke
meter measuring with a thermocouple, uh the temperature of that cell
and it's 30 and there's no reason for alarm. So you'd need to at least
see some voltage, at what voltage that cell is, to show like that
compared to uh knowing what the state of charge is, so you could ever
say that, wouldn't the temperature be eating its capacity according to
that. And fundamentally, so some such completely solid-state batteries
already exist in principle and you could make them, but they often
require that operation would be like at a higher temperature, so
somewhere around plus 60 degrees, so you can get them to work, so that
basically something of that solid material becomes conductive enough,
so that this would work this well in the cold, I don't know, because
this is again like these kinds of things, so deeply there like in
physics and electrochemistry at the base, how these batteries
behave. Well, I only changed that picture actually, just two things, I
thought this picture was funny, it looked to me like, it was taken
after they fried a ham and then they threw a battery cell in there and
did a little bit of these measurements, so yeah, no reason for alarm
at a hundred degrees. Good stuff. But that doesn't tell you anything
about its operation either. So we're completely dependent on that. We
trust what Donitsi says. Something like that, I want to still say
about that, what bothered me a lot in presenting these
measurements. So uh politely they had, because they had this Fluke
meter, so I have like an image editing software, so I was able to get
a nice capture from that Fluke meter. I took it from the widest
part. Here it said that the Fluke meter is exactly 10 millimeters. So
I got the scale from there, so I was able to get these pouch cell
dimensions very, very neatly from that, uh I drew myself. So I got
that information, that the pouch is 7.43 cm wide, 18.32 cm long. Of
course there's measurement error margins, but this definitely gives
like the order of magnitude, that cell tab, it's something like 2.7
cm, and the like, that cell tab that, well it's a bit harder to see
but you can still kind of estimate a little bit, that like the cell
tabs aren't especially thick, because here you can see a normal
alligator clip, which is attached to it, and it's not like far apart,
far apart from each other, that there would be like something of an
effect, that it would be really thick through. I'm coming to my point
next, which I have here. Uh similarly then that like the wire that
goes in there, well with the same method I took definitely like
probably more than not at least not downward, so it's about 1.1
centimeters thick, that wire that goes in there, because what matters
here uh is that the wire that's been used for this measurement, so
that is absolutely, I would say, undersized, so if 270 amps really
went into that cell, it's completely beyond standard for what that
device should like use, or what that kind of current should use. So
yeah, okay, five minutes is not a very long time, but it would
definitely heat up a lot in that time, you know like, so it's now
probably according to my measurement, so it takes like that cable
connector, uh 10k and there's an M8 screw and 35, so about 1.1 cm
thick cable, so that corresponds to about 35 square millimeters of
cable, which that is probably according to standard. And this also
applies to the fact that here is again a picture from there, uh from
the cycle tester's manual itself, so definitely there uh they
recommend exactly that 35 square millimeters cable for this, uh for
that measurement device, but for one unit. And this like, if you pull
270 amps through that, well that's definitely crazy, how much those
cables, so that makes me like skeptical here in this measurement
setup, about what's really actually been done here, because if that
really someone did this measurement setup well, they'd definitely
realize that you can't push 270 amps through cables that thin, because
it's already an extreme current, which this claims. This device jams
into that cell. Of course, this could be like, uh completely done for
demonstration purposes, this picture, that they tried to show like
yeah yeah, definitely our cell works, but they could have at least
tried better. To deceive. I don't like it. Well then, still to that
what I then started calculating a little bit. Let's go to these, uh
what else did I observe from there. So here now I've collected those
cell dimensions, so 18.4 cm long, 7.45 cm wide, thickness about a
centimeter range. And that thickness I got lucky from, when here was
this nice oven picture and there I now assumed that it is the same
cell, uh which now you'd think it would make sense, that it's the same
cell, that I have here now of course as an assumption. So I took, I
got, when I knew from this picture, I got the cell dimensions really
well, so I transferred them to this picture those dimensions and was
able to measure that cell's thickness, which came out to be a little
over a centimeter thick cell, which is basically like perfectly fits
that size range, when from that top picture of course you've seen how
thick that watch is. But what do I get from this? I can calculate that
uh pouch cell volume. Uh well here now of course there's some margin
of error, but bear with me. The charging current was 270 amps. We got
that from the video screen. The time we spent was five
minutes. Actually a bit less stays on, but let's use that five minutes
now. uh We got there in five minutes to 82 degrees. Uh and use a
relatively high one, because we don't really know what the chemistry
was and it was relatively high the whole time, the voltage there
during charging, so I'll give it now, this is really, this is fair,
this nominal voltage, that let's say that during that cell's discharge
it would be 4 V, that average of the voltage, which you'd get out of
it.  This is probably too high, but if I have other estimates here
around, well this at least raises it. So what does it do? Well then we
can calculate that we fed in 22.5 amp-hours of current during the fast
charging into that capacity into that cell. And then since we know,
assuming that the 82% we see in the video is correct, that gives us
27.44 amp-hours as the total cell capacity. And then if we use that 4V
estimate as the average voltage across the cell's capacity, we get
that the cell's total capacity would be around 110 watt-hours. So then
if we believe that claim that this is indeed 400 watt-hours per
kilogram of cell, then we get that knowing our cell is roughly 110
watt-hours, we divide it by that cell's energy density, and we get how
much this cell should weigh. It should weigh 274.4 grams. And then if
we look at what the density would be then, it would be 1.89 grams per
cubic centimeter. And that's really low. That's alarmingly low in my
opinion, and I don't think my calculations would have such a large
error, because current batteries have densities around 2.4 to 2.7
grams per cubic centimeter. And solid-state batteries shouldn't reduce
the density, given that the whole point is to pack more energy or
generally it's the opposite - you need to pack more grams into a lower
density. So because those typically have really high watt-per-liter
volumes, this is in my opinion a really strange value that came out of
my calculation, that it's so low, the density that this material in
this cell should have if it really is 400 watt-hours per kilogram. And
using that, we'd also get a volumetric energy density of only 755.4
watt-hours per liter, which is quite low. So this wouldn't even be
unreasonably high in terms of volume density for a solid-state
cell. No wonder they didn't mention this number if it holds any water
at all, but still, it's a good value and usable for many
applications. It's fine. Well then, one more thing that's bothering me
based purely on what you can calculate from the video, so let's assume
that was the 400 watt-hours per kilogram cell. Then we know the
mass. So we can somehow estimate that the temperature rise that
happened there during the measurement, we know that happened in five
minutes. We knew the charging current it happened at, so from this we
can very simply calculate what the heating power is, and that's 38.1
watts. And then from that simple P equals I squared times R we can try
to solve the resistance. And this is of course the integrated
resistance over the whole time. So 0.52 milliohms would be like the
resistance over that time. Or what the resistance should be if there
was a heat capacity of 1100? That's like a good average value for a
cell. Of course it affects the numbers somewhat, but this is just
trying to show that for it to heat up so little, the cell's resistance
would have to be really small, because you're pushing such an insane
current into it. And this is a kind of resistance you really don't see
in these cells. And because if you look at state-of-the-art EV cells,
that's in the 1-2 milliohm range. So this is now roughly half as much,
but still higher than what's in those. Though here it could be that I
can't see everything. So fortunately this is a pretty short time, but
it could be that the cell in the video was for example on some plate
with wires going to it, so it could be that it was actively cooled the
whole time, which would make this calculation pointless. It wouldn't
hold water anymore. But anyway, there's all kinds of alarming stuff
here, and sure there go some wires, but what exactly is going on
there. They probably could have been a bit clearer in these
publications, then you wouldn't have to doubt, if they were more
realistic. But that was like my kind of chemical analysis and battery
chemistry and battery physics analysis of this cell based on very,
very limited data that you can extract from this, but I think there
are at least some points here that I haven't seen anyone else bring up
in the media. At least that discussion is hopefully something new. But
then the biggest question in my opinion is who is it, who manufactures
these cells and why hasn't it been disclosed publicly. Because
honestly, if you have technology, battery technology, whose energy
density is 400 watt-hours per kilogram and it lasts 100,000 cycles,
that's like a hundred billion dollar business. It's like a cell that
works everywhere. And the possibilities are just infinite. And it's
absolutely crazy that it's kind of in the background who made these
cells, because and specifically correct me if I'm wrong, but nowhere
has it been said that Donald himself makes these cells, but they're
specifically through some partner they refer to, but nowhere is it
clearly said who it is. Well, it's not such a big secret when you
start digging into who it could be. And it's probably something like a
startup called Nordic Nano Group. And I made like a little timeline of
what's happened to this company in its short history. And this company
was indeed founded in January 2024, so like it's about two years old
soon, and in that time it's claimed that this company has produced an
absolutely next-level revolution in solid-state batteries that don't
currently exist in any commercial product. And someone who could get
their hands on this technology would be crazy not to. These guys would
be billionaires if they sold this technology to whoever. And if they
really had batteries to show, they'd get meetings where they could
talk to the big players. But why do I think it's kind of this Nordic
Nano Group's product what this guy is talking about here. Well let's
go through it a bit. In 2024, it was indeed founded, and in October
2024 news came that Nordic Nano is opening a factory in Imatra, of all
places in Finland, Imatra, and there they've said that they make
toxic-free, technically superior solid-state battery cells and also
solar panels use the same technology. And this is in my opinion like
the first red flag. You supposedly have one technology and you tackle
two absolutely massive problems right away, no problem. Same thing
works. And how do they do it? They have some nano printing technology
that's been taken to the next level using Finnish coating and
materials research. And I'm actually kind of myself a product of
Finland's coating and materials research. I've done work related to
batteries, but also with atomic layer deposition technology, which is
specifically part of this Finnish coating technology cluster. So well
yeah, of course we can always find something, but they've been pretty
secretive about what they supposedly invented there, and no one really
knows how to say what they've supposedly come up with, and nano
printing, I have a bit of an image of it later, but it's definitely
also like snake oil being sold as technology, I don't know how I
understand how this could really make those batteries, and how would
it scale to gigawatt-hour levels?  No idea. So the first financial
quarter showed 50,000 euros in revenue. They've already paid out
203,000 euros in salaries at a loss, or 203,000 euros in losses for
the first fiscal year. For a typical startup, that doesn't really mean
anything. Now it's actually interesting to see what the next financial
year results look like when they come in. Back in April 25th they
hired a head engineer, and that's an interesting point to dig
into. There's actually quite a long list of different things someone
like this needs to know. Obviously. Well, you always find everything
in one person. And it's the same story here. So now they're talking
about nanomaterial screen printing. That's really good. It's an
interesting technology that could scale up, and I know that, for
example, in my opinion specifically in Oulu they're actually
researching this quite seriously right now so they can actually
produce it. And in this role, I think that's even more important. So
back in April, in this role your job is to start a pilot production
line. So a year ago they didn't even have a pilot production line
running, and now they supposedly have a commercial battery in
use. Yep. Well then this happened. Why does everyone believe it now?
Oh sorry, I missed something. So their lead researcher defended their
thesis. Sorry, the name slipped my mind. But they published public
data. Defended a thesis on titanium oxide-based photocatalysts for
solar fuel production. Surely a really good thesis, nothing wrong with
that, but like it's not directly electrochemistry-related and it's
material-related stuff to do with nanomaterials, but you can't really
say it's directly related to batteries in any way. So then they're
connected to this kind of green reality community that operates over
in the Imatra area. And here they talk about solid-state salt
batteries being manufactured by printing with nanofluid, which enables
efficient space utilization for manufacturing batteries of different
shapes. Yeah. Yeah. That nanprinting for manufacturing solid-state
salt batteries. Yeah salt batteries. So there's some salt involved in
there anyway. But yeah. No, it's not like this is really, really
market hype or anything like that. No, I understand if they actually
have something truly revolutionary technology, then of course it's the
kind of stuff you don't talk about, but if you also had something like
that, you'd be able to show data so people would believe you without
you having to reveal what you have underneath. So then Donitsi Donits
Lapra invested in Nord Nano at that point, and this was now like one
where it was actually published, and after that they hired Lapra's
manager, an experienced chemist, and now they've started talking
about, yeah, screen printing, and now carbon nanotubes, CNTs, are
actually coming into play. And CNTs are like, you know, some kind of
snake oil material that's probably had tons of funding throughout
history already, but CNT isn't really anything magical. It's being
manufactured already. These days it's already being used over on the
cathode side for example in active material, because it has really
good electrical conductivity and it's really lightweight, so it works
really well on the cathode side for example, helping the cathode,
cathode activation, electrical conductivity, it's not anything new in
itself but there have definitely been attempts, companies trying to
make different products out of CNTs and you know a lot, and there are
some successful ones to some degree, but there's been this kind of
bad, bad, bad reputation for a long time, same as with graphene,
because you start getting things like graphene-based computers and
stuff like that, when it's a strange material. But yeah now they've
actually got CNTs coming in, like what kind of knowledge are they
looking for, what's bothering me here is that it seems like their
focus keeps shifting a little, like what they're trying to do
there. And this was actually what they were looking for, so this was
last August when this search happened. And here you can see that Labra
is supposed to get pre-production equipment, so there's definitely
been a big shift here. So they were talking about a pilot line and now
we've moved on to pre-production. It could basically be the same thing
or it could be different, but in any case the pace has been intense
for these guys. So then Nordic Nano received 2.9 million euros from
Hämeen elkösk back on the 17th of September, so last September, and
now that nanotprinting is holding its own with what they've done, but
now some quantum spin technology has come into the mix, and I have no
idea what that means in practice, especially on the energy storage
side. I do know what quantum spin is, but it sounds like snake oil or
whatever. But this, I was actually 2.9 million they got for investment
in manufacturing equipment acquisition, and this is just part of this
public construction complements and assured private, so there's at
least, well there's definitely at least what Donits breaking has put
in there when, so they've invested in Nordic Nano, well what could you
practically do with that nanotprinting, well you could make electrode
layers or their microstructures, you can make thin various thin
coatings there, when we have different batteries there, the materials
stacked there, so those interfaces can be really nicely adjusted there
at the micro scale, the nano scale, those stable surfaces or make
various composite layers, and how it works in practice. There are
multiple ways to do this. I'm not claiming in any way that I know what
they're using here, but this is sort of the same idea. So there's
something like the same idea as for example in that 3D printing, where
now first there's paper on which a pattern is made, which acts as a
current collector, and then positive and negative electronic ink is
printed on top of that, and then solid electrolyte is placed in
between, and then it's heated in between, and then you get, well,
sorry, that went wrong. No, you don't put solid electrolyte
there. These have also been made with a solid electrolyte, which is a
bad picture, solid electrolyte that's placed in there and then you get
kind of really nicely these so-called small 3D structures where we get
really short diffusion paths for those ions in the battery cell. So
the supposedly cell would work really efficiently. And it's true that
these are good at the point where we're talking about at most
microamperes. So these are really small batteries that usually with
this nanoptrinting have been made in science and otherwise, because I
don't really actually know how this kind of technology could be scaled
up rationally to like a gigawatt scale, because the gigawatt scale is
still a mass game in the end. You have some material which has some
mass and you store energy in that material in the end. So like you
can't get to the gigawatt without the output being insane and which
like because of that specifically the current battery manufacturing
much more resembles like how a paper machine works. No, not like that,
but it resembles that more, the pace has to be absolutely freezing at
which that paste is pushed onto the roll, and then from roll to roll
to roll they're treated and worked and they're moved forward quickly.
So it's not impossible, but I won't claim to be an expert on what
they're actually doing with their nanotube printing. But I do know
that it has a bit of a snake oil reputation, so to speak, in
discussions. It's not necessarily as reliable a technology as I
thought at first. Or at least not something that would actually
scale. So then Yle did a story about Nordic Nano, and this was from
episode 29 - so keep this in mind - this company currently employs
nine employees. I mean, another time they had nine employees, and
their goal is to employ 200. Great goals, employing lots of people,
thumbs up. They calculated what could fit in the factory spaces. Good
stuff. But nine people was mentioned another time, like a few months
ago. And now, now they've probably - this is the company that Donut
Lab is referring to when they talk about having a ready factory where
they can produce gigawatt-hour batteries. Then later they also had
strategic cooperation with Donut Lab again, as they mention. And here
they're using the same buzzwords. You know, sustainable, environmental
materials. And no rare earth elements and all that. And right now the
company is investing heavily in product development, research,
testing, and trusted strategic partnerships. But that doesn't really
sound like they had anything finished last October. Then Hesari also
wrote about Nordic Nano Group, saying they're an amazing potential
company for the future. And it said that Nordic Nano already has two
anchor, well, two customers. One in some solar energy field, but we
don't know who that is. It hasn't come public yet. And the other one -
requiring batteries for electric bikes. Hmm. Who could that be? I
don't know who these could be. And now we're here today where Donut
Lab is releasing their solid-state battery, which is 2024's
startup-developed technology. Great! This is the reason. I actually
mentioned Nordic Nano before. And there's one more thing that confuses
me a bit here, and that's that here on Nordic Nano's own website - I
don't want to put names or faces in this video because I have nothing
against these people. They're certainly skilled at what they do. But
the thing is, developing new battery technology actually takes decades
easily, right. Like Quantum Scape and Solid Power and these kinds of
actual big players who are trying to develop solid-state battery
technology - they've spent enough time that they're just now starting
to get products out that they can actually use. And then if we start
looking at these people's LinkedIn profiles - I went through all of
them - what did they do before they founded Nordic Nano? There's been
sales, investing, CEO, CEO, security, sales. Commercialization and
some people from Nokia who were investors, they said, and there's one
person with a materials science PhD background, but like, if at this
point there were eight people here who'd been on these pages for a
long time - these same eight people - and now according to the latest
YLE story they had nine employees. So one employee is missing from
this picture. So who's doing all the work in that place? Can I ask?
Pretty unbelievable. Well, okay, sorry, there's a German board member,
so maybe he's not counted as an employee. But this one here is
CEO. Okay, sorry, that one was also a board member. So yeah, there are
a few more actual employees then. My friend always likes to say that
there are too few engineers in the world doing the actual work and way
too many managers. And I think the structure of Nordic Nano is
definitely, strongly like that - they're doing such a huge thing, so
who's the mastermind behind this? Who came up with this? Where did
they get it from? And I remember that I read somewhere before, when I
read about Nordic Nano, that they had some explanation that they found
the technology somewhere in Germany and now they're bringing it to
Finland. Uh, yeah. That sounds like a plausible explanation. Nothing
else about it. But the thing is, think about this really - this is
Michael Sura's fine parting shot. Um, congratulations. You've beaten
Quantum Scape, Prologium, Catl, Bytron, Tesla LGS, Samsung, Panasonic,
Solid Power, Johnson Matthey, Ampere, and 3 to 400 other companies
that are spending billions on solid-state battery research, and a
small startup founded in 2024 comes along and in Q1 of 2026 promises
to push out cells, and even though Donut Lab has made a great engine,
so a small Finnish startup is going to sell their technology when they
could sell that technology to literally anyone in the world who knows
anything about electrical energy storage. I want to repeat that I have
nothing against these people - they're building this and I think Donut
Lab's engine is really, really great innovation that they've made, and
the story is great and the commercialization behind it is great, and I
hope all the best for them. I hope. I really hope. I wouldn't want to
be a pessimist. I'd like this to be true. But you also have to be
honest with yourself, and especially now that I'm analyzing this video
a bit, there's something fishy happening in their measurement
setup. Or maybe I don't understand the chemistry that's happening
inside. That's also very possible - that I don't understand anything
about anything. And maybe this is some Nobel Prize-worthy invention
that I'm staring at from my little computer in my little garage. But
if you disagree with any of this, put it in the comments. Maybe
there's something else that could be analyzed, but these were the
things I found. I especially tried to find things that I hadn't seen,
things that anyone else might have missed from these cells
directly. Just to add a different angle to the discussion. Subscribe
to Battery Doctor's cave and hopefully we'll be back with more
videos. This was a bit of a different video, but it was fun to make,
and sorry about the low production quality. This material and analysis
were just thrown together without blinking. Now I'm going to sleep,
and good morning, good night, or good day to you.