TEG

mt2

Hmm.

Although EEstor isn't talking, ZENN's Clifford is quiet the chatterbox about it. If what he says is true, we're on the edge of something that will revolutionize energy storage (which, of course, is what EEstor would have us believe).

Putting my skepticism aside for a minute, I suppose I could understand EEstor's silence. If I had something like that, I would be quiet about it too. I'd want to make sure it was fully production ready, protected by patents, and the claims are documented and verifiable before I said a word. Seriously quiet.

But the "rechargeable in less than 5 minutes" thing sort of blows their credibility. Sure, if you live at a nuclear power plant and don't have to worry about pesky household wiring.

__________________
Mark Tomlinson
"I am not a trouble maker; I'm a catalyst for change."

flabby

I don't think that claiming the ability to recharge in 5 min blows their credibility. That is a property of capacitors and it's my undersanding that the Eestor unit IS a capacitor. Now coming up with a practical method/resource to charge it that fast is a different story.

I listened to the Zenn meeting yesterday where all of these announcements were made, and something was said that to does lessen Eestor's credibility in my eyes. In the question and answer session at the end of the meeting, someone asked the Zenn board if they had ever tested the Eestor unit. The reply was, "...No, we have not."

You can listen to the meeting by signing up here:
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistra...epage=register

mt2

Eww, an hour of dry Powerpoint slides. I'll do that for work, but not for fun.

I guess I should qualify my credibility comment. If I heard "five minute recharge" from EEstore, that would be one thing. But the article attributed it to Ian Clifford of ZENN. There's a difference between a capacitor manufacture making the claim and a car manufacturer making the claim. The biggest difference being the audience. It implies to me that either EEstore is misleading ZENN, or ZENN is being misleading, or the media decided to drop the pesky details.

All in all, however, we're both skeptical - as I think everyone is.

__________________
Mark Tomlinson
"I am not a trouble maker; I'm a catalyst for change."

Hunter

Well, perhaps. The only problem is they aren't really doing that...they're feigning it. We see a news story every couple of months hyping this incredible (and imminent) breakthrough. They've been saying exactly the same thing for years and years now. Apparently they don't show anything at all to the press but one patent (for the powder from which the caps are someday allegedly to be made) and occasional press releases, and somehow they've managed to get the newsmen to believe this makes them "stealthy" instead of "frauds." How they manage to get so much media attention while convincing everyone they don't want it is beyond me.

Anyway, I'd love to be proven wrong. But I think we are just seeing ZENN get taken for a ride. See here for the last car company they screwed, about 2 years ago.

DDB

A couple of things keep me interested in EESTOR. One, they're not publicly traded (like ZAP), which means they can't just issue stop to the gullible and unsuspecting. VCs are a little more careful where they put their money. Second, Lockheed Martin somehow has an interest in these guys, which means there is some substance here. But the second they go public and haven't proven jack to a an independent third party, I'm with you.

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Dave

'05 Passat powered by Biodiesel
'54 Corvette

flabby

Hunter
I am skeptical of Eestor as well, but I believe that most of Eestor's media attention comes because of announcements that were made by Zenn Cars, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Lockheed-Martin, not necessarily by Eestor itself.

Also, Feel Good Cars, the company you said was the last car company that Eestor screwed, and ZennCars are the same company.

As an aside, something I thought was interesting: From Zenn's last public meeting I gathered that Zenn Cars invested in Eestor before Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

SByer

The '5 minute recharge' stretches credibility not because the capacitor itself couldn't take the recharge (heck, Tesla's highly parallel battery unit could probably take a 10 minute charge without stressing the batteries too much), but because there's no good way of actually getting that amount of current to the battery. Unless you live next to a substation and hire a former weight trainer as a garage attendant to handle the cables.

Instead of swapping batteries, I think it would be better if some Project Better Place alternative came up with a cabling / location standard for a very high current connection that electric car companies could implement to - one that required a minimal amount of weight in the car. Then I might believe the 5 minute charge time :-).

TEG

In a recent interview Shai commented on the size of a cable required for a 5 minute recharge. His viewpoint was that it was impractical. He also said no one would want a car that caused your hair to stand on end when you got near it, or one where you had to stand way back while it was charging.

Hunter

TEG, yeah I did a bit more reading on the Zenn/EEstor thing and finally saw that Feel Good was Zenn. Doh.

And I'm certainly sensitive to the fact that EEstor has convinced some serious investors that its technology has potential But on the other hand I would say that both VCs and defense companies are willing to take a lot of risky bets to find that one breakthrough technology. The cost of this investment is probably pretty small to Kleiner, whereas the profits if it actually worked would be tremendous. It's what poker players call "table odds."

Then there's the trouble with validating the physics. Nobody seems to want to do it. The fellow Lockheed allowed to be interviewed on the deal knew nothing of the tech and/or wasn't briefed, and more or less admitted that EEstor had shown them nothing. He also refused to say whether Lockheed was actually paying EEstor anything. I get similar feelings from Zenn and the press. And so far, every single knowledgeable person (in this context I'm accepting anyone who knows what "perovskite" means) I've ever read a comment from on this subject thinks that it can't work. Not a single one of them stepped up and said "well, sure, if they are making that the way they say, it should work and have those characteristics."

Then there's the fact that if this stuff was really real, GM would have bought them up. Perhaps to sell to Chevron, but that's a different story...