Back in January, WhichCar by Wheels asked whether you would consider an electric vehicle if the charging time was reduced significantly. And now, after some initial scepticism, Finnish Tech startup Donut Labs has backed up its impressive claims with firm evidence.

Donut Lab debuted its new solid-state battery at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas and claimed it was capable of of 595km driving range, with as little as ten minutes charge time required. While solid-state technology is not new, and major manufacturers are working on the technology, none have reached production yet. Donut Lab has claimed from the outset that its battery was in fact production ready.

Initially sceptics were highly critical of Donut Lab’s claims, and the concept was heavily criticised, but the Finnish startup vowed to prove its detractors wrong. Independent testing has now proved that the battery works reliably at extreme temperatures, more than 100 degrees celsius in fact.

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Solid state batteries promise to be safer and significantly more capable of storing higher energy density, therefore being more efficient for the same amount of real estate within a vehicle platform. There are issues associated with them though, which is why we haven’t yet seen them in production-ready form, including excess heat and the possibility of cracks appearing under repeated stress.

Despite some of the world’s leading manufacturers working hard to bring solid-state technology to the mainstream (including BYD), it was Donut Lab that delivered technology that, on paper at least, looked to have blown all previous efforts out of the water. Tackling the scepticism head on, Donut Lab even created a portal called I Donut Believe with the site documenting the company’s work to dispel that criticism.

Finnish state-owned research firm VTT Technical Research Center was tasked with testing the ground-breaking technology. The first result released last week showed that the battery can in fact be charged in close to five minutes, matching the Donut Lab claim, at a temperature up to 90 degrees celsius.

The VTT test, in layman’s terms, illustrated that the battery can be charged from zero to 80 per cent in four and a half minutes, with a full charge taking just 11 minutes. That means the Donut Lab solid-state battery is almost four times more charge-efficient than a more traditional lithium-ion battery, even when it has active cooling.

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Donut Lab claims that the independent tests prove that its solid-state batteries, “can withstand astonishing charging rates even without active temperature control”. If you click through to the link for the I Donut Believe site, you can download the independent VTT report.

Given solid-state technology has long been considered the silver bullet solution for EVs, the next step will be to see whether this technology can be made available, affordably, for large-scale production.