Is this the world’s first solid-state battery?

CES is the land of bold announcements about amazing, innovative products and technologies that will revolutionize the world, often released within a couple of years. Twenty-four months seems to be the right hype period: close enough to generate excitement and investment, but far enough away that everyone will forget about your promises before the deadline comes and quietly expires.

It was CES 2018 when Henrik Fisker made such a statement, saying that his team of experts had cracked the code on solid-state batteries. He added that by 2020, these batteries will be produced in large quantities. It was the car Emotionwhich never reached the market. By 2021, the company had He abandoned the dream of a solid stateand by 2024, the entire process He went bankrupt.

At CES 2026 in Las Vegas, it’s time for another bold announcement about the small team of engineers who discovered the solid state. This time it’s Marko Lehmäki, co-founder and CEO of Donut Lab, an electric vehicle technology startup that spun out Verg Motorcycles (No relation to Edge). Naturally, I’m skeptical, but there’s one key difference that gives me hope: Lehtimaki says the donut battery won’t be out after 24 months. It’s in production now.

If you’re not riding the wave of solid-state hype, the promise is for a cheap, light, fast-charging, cool-running, power-dense, burn-out battery cell. They are still theoretically the same battery design as they have been for the past 200 years. This means an anode on one side and a cathode on the other, separated by an electrolyte through which charge-carrying ions can move back and forth as the cell is charged or discharged.

In a traditional lithium-ion cell, the electrolyte is a liquid of some sort. In a solid state battery, it is of course a solid material. This may seem like a simple shift, but it has huge ramifications, the biggest of which is effective durability. Like solid-state electronics, nothing wears out or breaks, which means a huge increase in durability, charging speed, and power density.

As for solid-state batteries, Donut Lab has listed some impressive numbers. For starters, there’s a power density of 400 Wh/kg, which is about a third greater than a modern lithium-ion pack. In other words, 30 percent more range in an electric car with the same battery weight.

Despite this boost, Lehmäki says these cells are actually cheaper to manufacture. These batteries will first appear in the Verge TS Pro, and Lehtimaki tells me that switching to these new, ultra-advanced cells actually reduces cost.

“The bill of materials has gone down, and it’s going down as every other vendor is buying at the rate we’re selling to them at,” Lehtimäki says.

Donat says the batteries can be fully charged in less than five minutes, which finally means an electric car that charges as quickly as a car can be charged with gas.

For this first application, it’s a little slower: 10 minutes in Verge TS Pro. The company is also a bit conservative when it comes to the lifespan of the cells. Donut Lab promises 100,000 charging cycles before the battery dies, and Verge says it’s 10,000.

And even that’s a radical improvement over the roughly 1,500 cycles you might expect from a typical lithium-ion battery pack for electric vehicles. However, the 100,000 number is a total game-changer, creating a battery that easily outlasts the car it was built to power.

“The cycle life, the remaining value of the battery, is actually 100 percent after the life of the car,” says Lehmäki. “So it becomes the only component that retains its value, and you can use it as a home battery, or something else.”

There are other effects too. Lehtimaki says donut batteries are extremely thermally stable, delivering nearly full capacity, down to -22 degrees Fahrenheit. This means it will also require less refrigeration. I spoke with Neil Yates, founder and CEO of Watt Electric Vehicle Company, a platform maker for electric vehicles that uses Donut Lab’s hub motors in its products and is looking to adapt the new batteries to its platform as well.

“There would be no need for real active cooling at all,” Yates says, thanks to the donut battery’s thermal flexibility. “We do our best to manage the case it’s in, but that’s case management, rather than specific battery management.” The lack of active cooling means less plumbing is needed in the car, which saves even more weight.

And again it is said that all this is happening now. The cells are actively produced in Finland, with an initial production capacity of about one gigawatt-hour, says Lehtimäki. But he says Donut Lab could quickly build new factories in the United States if there is enough demand from American automakers.

This is supported by battery chemistry that is completely free of any type of conflict or difficult materials that may be subject to difficult import or export regulations or tariffs.

That might indicate something like a construction made of sodium metal, but Lehtimaki wasn’t ready to talk about specifics. In fact, there are many details that we will have to wait for clarity on, including how Donut Lab was able to solve the so-called dendrite problem. Many solid-state startups have been hampered by this challenge, which is a flaw in the battery that looks a bit like microscopic stalagmites that grow from anode to cathode across the solid-state electrolyte. When they cross the bridge, you get a disastrous short run, and probably a lot of smoke and fire.

How did Donut Lab solve this problem that many big companies have failed at? He credits having a small, agile team. “The party that has the ability and then iterates faster is the party that is clearly creating innovation,” says Lehtimäki. “I’ve always said that 20 engineers beat 2,000 engineers.”

There has been online speculation that Donut Lab is using technology from another Finnish startup, Nordic Nano, a renewable energy company in which Donut Lab has invested. Lehtimaki serves as a board member at Nordic Nano, but says that’s not where the product came from. “It’s not one of them,” he says.

Lehtimaki says Donut and Verge Motorcycles engineers have been quietly working on battery designs since 2018, and this is the fruit of all that work. Where are the patents? Lehtimaki says they’re coming, and promises to have plenty of details to share over the next few months once they’re cleared.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical here. There are some strange similarities between Lehtimaki’s claims and those made by Fisker in 2018, including talk of smaller versions of the phones. But unlike Fisker and all the other solid-state forecasters promising massive, fast-charging electric vehicles, Lehtimaki isn’t giving himself a 24-month window to milk investors before fading into the sunset. He says everything will be proven in just weeks. This alone gives me reason for optimism, but at least I won’t have to wait long to be disappointed.

Photography by Tim Stevens