[tedk-42]

I'm very skeptical of any company that just 'pops up' and makes a bunch of claims that will shake up the industry.

I doubt they'd sell to endusers, but not having any partnerships with established brands with sales figures is a big red flag.

No mention of manufacturing capabilities either so I think it's just hype (or worse a rug pull for early investors)

[nomel]

if you look at the history of the lithium ion battery [1], this is exactly what happened, except from a single man. none of the existing manufacturers could stomach the shift to something new, except for sony, which needed a better battery for their camcorder, eventually resulting in a nobel prize.

[1] https://youtu.be/AGglJehON5g

[Aloisius]

No company involved in lithium ion batteries just popped up out of nowhere.

Whittingham worked for ExxonMobil. Akira Yoshino worked at a joint venture of Toshiba and Asahi Kasei. And Yoshio Nishi worked at Sony.

They were all giant well-established companies.

[Terr_]

Some poking around suggests it's a subsidiary of "Verge Motorcycles", which are electric and have much more of a web presence.

[Animats]

Agreed. But you can supposedly book a test ride on a Verge motorcycle with this battery.[1] Verge has three stores in California, two of which are in Silicon Valley.

Base price $35,000 with the good battery.

Solid state batteries have been working for a while now, but they're still far too expensive. Mercedes has one demo car. Ducati has one demo motorcycle. Maybe they just decided to accept the high cost and sell a high-end product.

[1] https://www.vergemotorcycles.com/

[tyleo]

Yeah, I’m wondering if it could be a Tesla strategy of starting with the something imperfect but niche.

If the product is on the market and you can buy one and walk out the door, I feel like claims can easily be validated or invalidated with a tear down.

[Fred27]

I'm not sure the test rides are for the version of the bike with this battery. The bike already exists with a more conventional battery pack.

I've had a brief test ride on a pre-production version of the Verge TS. All seemed OK but I thought the handling seemed weird - maybe due to the rear tyre size and geometry.

[notTooFarGone]

Let's wait until Q2 when the first bikes with ssb would roll out

[tckk]

They didn't just pop up. Oems & their sister company Verge are already using their axial flux motors. And you can order the latest Verge motorcycle with the solid state battery today.

[jaggs]

Um... Did nobody see the Verge motorbike which is now shipping as standard with this battery? And the three companies which are also deploying the new battery tech? If this is a scam, it's definitely a very very sophisticated one.

[stasomatic]

The Verge was discussed at least 2 times, most recently yesterday, on the Wheel Bearings podcast (which I enjoy for the simple motorhead banter). https://overcast.fm/+AA7tJqdxHkE

Robbie from SAE International, who is of the hosts, and an avid motorcyclist, is impressed with the bike and the promise of SSBs. I only ride bicycles, can’t comment on the bike itself, but thought to share and widen their audience. It was kind of a mini shallow yet “deep dive”. It doesn’t seem to be mentioned on their own site for this episode, but the chapter in Overcast is the last one, linking to https://sustainablecareers.sae.org/article/donut-lab-verge-s...

[cloudfudge]

"Now shipping?" I do not see evidence of that. I am not even convinced the one you can test ride has this battery tech. They announced this same bike at least a year ago with regular LIon batteries.

[Electricniko]

I don't know about a scam, but the EV skateboard they're using has been available for other companies to use for a few years, while the other two companies share the same leadership as Donut/Verge and appear to be founded within the last few months. The battery may be great, but the multiple company launch seems a bit of a marketing gimmick.

[jimt1234]

Not necessarily a scam, but it smells like more hype that reality. For example, the web page boasts "2000+ test rides complete", which basically says nothing.

I hope this battery tech and the statements on the web page are true (370-mile range from an electric motorcycle!), but I'm not writing any checks just yet.

[jaggs]

One thing that most people have missed is that in the Verge small print they discuss the range of the motorbike as being 217 miles for around town driving, which plummets to 127 at 56 mph per hour on the highway. That seems quite a big drop to me, but there again I'm not a battery expert.