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

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.

Plus, every major battery and car company is chasing solid state battery technology as the holy grail. And lots of startups.

When I was buying lithium ion cells a few years ago for a custom off-grid battery build, CATL cells had the best reviews and testing results around.

They were founded in 2011 as a spin-off from ATL, itself founded in 1999 by a Chinese billionaire (Robin Zeng). They definitely didn't pop up out of nowhere.

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

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

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/

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.

Not even a teardown. Just a few charge + discharge cycles, measuring the energy.

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.

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.

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.

How would you do it, instead?

not too sure of your point. The skateboard has been available with conventional lithium ion batteries. What they're saying here is they've just upgraded it to the new solid state ones. Fairly logical.And I'm totally mystified by the shared leadership comment. What shared leadership?

According to press releases, the CEO of Donut/Verge founded Cova and ESOX in October/November. They're newly formed companies that haven't done anything yet, so I don't really think it would require much sophistication to say that three companies have already adopted this technology. Again, this doesn't say anything about the "realness" of the battery technology, I just wouldn't rely on the idea that multiple companies adopting it means that the technology is real, since right now it's tending to look more like businessmen throwing out multiple shell startups in different industries to lend weight to the announcement.

Hmm..not really. Cova Power is a joint venture between Donut Labs and Ahola which is a huge Finnish freight company formed in 1955 - which makes sense since they are both based in Finland. The involvement of the University of Oulu suggests that this is clearly a Finnish project. I wouldn't be surprised to find some Nokia money in there as well. ESOX is just the military product arm of Donut Labs, which I guess has connections with the Finnish military.

"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.

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.

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...

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.

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.