Thread by @shortl2021

1/25. I'm out of hibernation on the solid state battery announcement made by Donut Lab prior to their presentation at CES 2026 in LA that starts today. If the claims are true, it changes everything. ST, It’s a death blow to QuantumScape $QS, but that’s just for starters.

2/25. To get up to speed, start by watching the Donut Lab CEO’s video presentation released just before CES on YouTube:

3/25. You then need to understand the relationship between Verge Motorcyles and Donut Lab.

vergemotorcycles.com

4/25. Verge is the parent of Donut Lab. Donut was spun out of Verge to raise fund, particularly a euro 25 million round in July 2025. But they are highly integrated. Indeed, the brothers Marko Lehtimaki and Tuomo Lehtimaki are the CEOs of Donut Lab and Verge respectively.

5/25. So, how the hell did the battery technology come from since up to now they are known as an electrical engineering pioneer with its in-wheel electric motor technology?

The piece of this puzzle comes from Donut Lab’s relationship with Nordic Nano.

nordicnano.co

6/25. Nordic Nano came out of a collaboration between two Finish industrial & tech entrepreneurs, Esa Parjanen & Mattipekka Kronqvist, and the acadamic Dr Bela Bhuskute.

7/25. Dr Bhuskute was working on her doctoral thesis on solid state batteries when she linked up with these two guys. So even before Bhuskute got her doctorate, Nordic Nano was being set up in 2024.

tuni.fi/en/news/bela-b…

8/25. The viability of the technology can be confirmed by the involvement of the European Space Agency in June 2025. The reason? Nordic Nano’s technology boasts extraordinary resilience to temperature ranges, making it perfect for space-based applications.

9/25. Between Jun & Oct 25, Donut Lab made sequential investments into Nordic Nano, in effect bringing it in-house although Nordic Nano remains a separate legal entity with a separate R&D hub in Finland. Think of the relationship as similar to that between Deep Mind and Google.

10/25. So what is so special about the new Donut Lab (actually Nordic Nano) battery? If you’ve followed the sector, you know the "Holy Grail" specs by heart. Donut Lab is hitting them all at once:

11/25.

• 400 Wh/kg (50% > Lithium-Ion)
• 5-min full charge
• 100,000 cycles. Basically the battery will last longer than any vehicle it’s placed inside.

12/25.

Now let’s look at Donut Lab’s management team. This isn't a university spin-off. The leadership team is a "Who's Who" of people who actually ship high-performance hardware:

13/25

• Haydn Baker: (Ex-McLaren, Rivian).
• Neil Patterson: (Ex-McLaren, Aston Martin).
• Craig Williams: (Ex-BMW, Rivian).

I'll let you check their Linked-in bios.

14/25. On the board: Risto Siilasmaa. The man who steered Nokia and founded F-Secure. He’s the personification of Finnish industrial pragmatism. He doesn't do "vaporware."

15/25. The development footprint is also a major "tell." They’ve got the Baltic tech hubs for software, but their R&D is in Chippenham, UK—right in the middle of F1's "Motorsport Valley."

16/25. Now let’s go back to Nordic Nano Group and its Chief Scientist, Dr. Bela Dhananjay Bhuskute.
Her work on Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is the missing link. It’s "printing" a battery one atom at a time.

17/25. Dr. Bhuskute’s "Solid-State Salt" architecture is the key to that insane 100k cycle claim. By using ALD, they create a surface so uniform that dendrites—the needles that kill $QS cells—simply can't find a place to form.

18/25. There’s also a "German Connection." They are reportedly using high-precision nanoprinting tech from Germany. This allows for "clay-like" design freedom—meaning the battery can actually be the structure of the vehicle.

19/25. Yo can think of Nordic Nano providing the ink and the Germans the printers for these solid-state batteries.

Nanoscribe: nanoscribe.com/en/
Fraunhofer: ffb.fraunhofer.de/en.html

20/25. I looked for the patents. There aren't many, usually a red flag. But in battery world, "Patent & Publish" is a risk. They are using a Trade Secret strategy. They aren't patenting the recipe; they are patenting the "Kitchen" (the manufacturing process).

21/25. This strategy is likely why they have partnerships with high-level European tech hubs and the ESA (European Space Agency). These institutions require massive "IP Moats" before they sign off on funding. They know something the public doesn't.

22/25. The ultimate "Proof of Concept" isn't a press release. It's the parent company Verge TS Pro motorcycle. Verge are real. They ship. The 2026 model will use the Donut Lab battery as its core. 370 miles of range and a 5-minute charge.

vergemotorcycles.com

23/25. If these bikes hit the road in March as promised, $QS and the other "2028-or-bust" companies are in deep trouble. Actually, that’s an understatement. QuantumScape are dead in the water. It's hard to sell a "future" in 2028 when a Finnish bike is already doing it in 2026.

24/25. The big picture is staggering. If this tech scales and gets licensed to the CATLs or BYDs of the world, it’s "Lights Out" for the Internal Combustion Engine. A 5-minute charge is the exact moment the fossil fuel industry loses its only remaining advantage.

25/25. I’ve been a "Solid-State Sceptic" for a long time. But Donut Lab is saying they are ready to ship and will be selling these batteries inside Verge motorcycles within the next 3 months. There is no-where to hide with this statement. I wouldn’t want to be an investor in $QS