You would know by testing it.

This company is making an extraordinary claim regarding capacity and cycle-life, and they aren't showing extraordinary proof to back it up.

For what it's worth, they have a graph of a test of a 2 (!) cells at [1]. From a sample of two, it is quite extraordinary, indeed. I find it very hard to believe in the Altair->Microsoft hypothesis. Altair to microsoft was a new practice overlooked by the big guys. Lithium charging is a very concentrated area of research with lots of investment.

For comparison, I found [2] which is a test done of pulse-charging by Electrochem/ENREV and a university. This area of research has been going on for almost two decades. I've found a number of studies on the topic. [3][4][5] I don't have time to analyze them all today, but #5 looks really good at first glance.

[1] http://www.getbatterybox.com/bos.html#highexpl [2] http://www.electrochem.org/dl/ma/197/pdfs/0111.PDF [3] http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/popov/drbnp/Ramadass/June2002.... [4] http://www.researchgate.net/publication/242110481_The_effect... [5] http://kohl.chbe.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/linked_files...

To be precise, according to that link, their sample size is n = 1. Not even two.

Sad.

I mean, they're letting you buy the damn thing, so once you purchase it, you can see if it holds up.

Yes, snake oil salesmen are usually happy to let you buy some snake oil.

I feel like YC would have enough snake oil radar to detect if this was bogus before backing them. They don't back just anyone after all.

This is a little more difficult when knowledge moves faster than product delivery. "Snake oil salesmen" did their thing because they could move from community to community and stay ahead of the news about a fraud coming through.

I have no idea if this battery thingy is all it's cracked up to be, but the group won't last that long if they don't deliver.

The graph doesn't diverge from the "standard" lithium battery pack for 3-4 years. The buyers won't know if they are "snake oil salesmen" for a relatively long time.

Even if you do accelerated cycles on the battery, it will be a while (1 year? 2 years?) before you can say "snake oil" and it will be around two times longer before you can confirm the claim.

It isn't a halting problem, but in terms of the pace of electronics, it's close in that by the time you can confirm it isn't snake oil, it may well be irrelevant.

Pre-ordering solves that problem. The product is delivered to everybody at once, before any knowledge can spread.

...and two to four years before fraud can be detected.