Zenn again!!

[daniel]

The president of the local EV club, who two years ago told me U-caps would be available for purchase for EV conversions in 3 months, once again believes they are right around the corner, and is already designing his current EV conversion to be convertible to U-caps once he gets his hands on some. He has me convinced that EEStor might not be a scam. Notice that I didn't say I believe that EEStor is not a scam. I said I think they might not be a scam.

I'm not investing in Zenn because their stock is extremely volatile. It shot way up a few months ago (maybe that was when they announced the permittivity test) and has been bouncing up and down since then. My investment philosophy does not allow me to put enough money into any one stock, for it to make a really big difference to my portfolio if that one stock collapses or skyrockets. I really think $1,000 per share for Zenn is a pipe dream. But I wish you guys the best.

If u-caps are real and become available for purchase, I win, along with all other EV enthusiasts, because I could have them put into one or both of my EVs. So I'm rooting for EEEStor and Zenn. I'll happily pay the price, and see some of the profits go into your pockets, if it means I can have an EV that does what I want it to!

[DaveinOlyWA]

i expect no more than $70-80 per share by next summer if product is announced within next 60 days. Zenn would be foolish to rush to market. so their company will grow fast, but not that fast. EESU's at this point will still be manufactured by eestor. their process is very similar to microprocesser manufacturing. so to bring an entirely separate factory online would take an average 12-18 months of intense engineering work before ground could even be broken.

intel had a factory in the far east that was getting failure rates of more than 5 times higher than 3 other plants that were identical copies of it.(even done to the floor plan of the offices and personal areas, color of the paint, etc. but they were not consistent.

eventually they determined that vibration from the subway several blocks away during rush hours was causing contamination of dust particles being shaken loose and getting the dies dirty. they adjusted the process, coordinated it with the train schedules (basically making sure the critical wash and rinse process was done AFTER rush hour) after that, quality numbers matched the other fabs. so cranking out a ton of these EESU's anytime soon just aint gonna happen

plus, too much opportunity to lose their exclusivity. like any other company with an exclusive product, a TON of money will have to be spent policing their patents, licensing rights, etc. i once read that Coca Cola spends more than 5 billion a year chasing down clones, frauds, etc.

they estimate it will take more than a year for even a decent ramp up. eestor now has a setup where they can just add parallel manufacturing lines to the factory they have going now. but like all new ramp ups i expect bumps in the road as par for the course.

i dont see a marketable car on the road until the at the earliest summer next year. i do see Zenn energy conversion kits coming out sooner, but now sure i want to be the first guinea pig...

[Fibb222]

Originally Posted by daniel

If u-caps are real and become available for purchase, I win, along with all other EV enthusiasts, because I could have them put into one or both of my EVs. So I'm rooting for EEEStor and Zenn. I'll happily pay the price, and see some of the profits go into your pockets, if it means I can have an EV that does what I want it to!

Well said, however even just a $1000 "thrown away" at ZNN is IMHO a good idea given that the upside is potentially so huge. The EESU, if real, is going to be a multi-trillion dollar product. Whether you buy the stock at 4 dollars or 34 dollars won't make any difference if the EESU is real. You'll still be rewarded.... (if the EESU is real).

[DaveinOlyWA]

Originally Posted by Fibb222

Well said, however even just a $1000 "thrown away" at ZNN is IMHO a good idea given that the upside is potentially so huge. The EESU, if real, is going to be a multi-trillion dollar product. Whether you buy the stock at 4 dollars or 34 dollars won't make any difference if the EESU is real. You'll still be rewarded.... (if the EESU is real).

yes it will be...eventually. the Trillion dollar Oil industry is not going to lay down and die just because a better idea is out there.

expansion will be painfully slow. even if a product is announced today, it will be months before we can get a retro kit and nearly a year before cars FIRST become available. posted this once but initial EV distribution will start then Europe THEN go to Asia THEN go to South America before coming to us.

despite it being a great revoluntionary watershed event, blah blah, it will still take years to get there. trust me, red tape will see to it. either way, it will kick start our economy and swing the balance of trade to our side for the first time in a LONG time...

but, we be lucky to see it on a production car anytime in 2010...

[Fibb222]

Originally Posted by DaveinOlyWA

yes it will be...eventually. the Trillion dollar Oil industry is not going to lay down and die just because a better idea is out there.

expansion will be painfully slow. even if a product is announced today, it will be months before we can get a retro kit and nearly a year before cars FIRST become available. posted this once but initial EV distribution will start then Europe THEN go to Asia THEN go to South America before coming to us.

despite it being a great revoluntionary watershed event, blah blah, it will still take years to get there. trust me, red tape will see to it. either way, it will kick start our economy and swing the balance of trade to our side for the first time in a LONG time...

but, we be lucky to see it on a production car anytime in 2010...

Oh I know it will take years, BUT it's not just a product for EVs. Anywhere you see a chemical battery the EESU can store energy better. Remember, ZNN owns 10+% of EEStor so they will benefit from every possible application - everything from electric toothbrushes to grid-leveling, industrial applications.

Also, even though the product won't be able to supplant, oil, gas, and coal right away, once the EESU is proven tech, wouldn't the inevitability of it taking over make the stock price jump in anticipation of all that economic disruption?

[daniel]

I agree with Dave: It will take a long time to bring this to market. This is what I've said many times before, whenever they've announced or suggested a car would be available soon.

Another thing: You don't build a trillion-dollar company or industry from the investment that EEStor and/or Zenn has today. It will require a massive infusion of capital, and that will dilute present investments. If this thing is real (and I think it might be, or it might not be) Zenn stock will go up a lot. Maybe in 30 years from now a thousand dollars in 2009 will have gone to a million dollars, or a hundred million. But I won't be here to spend it. And the whole market will have gone up, and the value of the dollar will have gone down. In the end, it's a high-risk investment with the potential for high returns. A better investment for a young person, who can afford to lose it if it flops, or wait 30 years if it succeeds, than for an old fart who wants present income to spend in the few years he's got left of life.

So, I'll just buy some u-caps for my car if they become available, and call myself a winner, and leave the investing to you folks. BTW, are you willing to tell us how many shares of Zenn you guys have, so we can beg from you when you become billionaires?

[Fibb222]

only 7% of my investment portfolio is in ZNN. I'm comfortable losing it all if ZNN goes bust and also won't be too upset that I didn't have more if it turns into the stock of the century. A pretty sweet spot.

[DaveinOlyWA]

oh i think you will make a decent amount of money in just a few years time. even if you take the best years of intel or microsoft, you are still looking at 10-15 years for any growth beyond 1000%.

but i think its reasonable that you could put in $5000 now double that in less than 2 years. i personally think the stock will grow somewhat faster than that, but it will not be a smooth ride.

but if the EESU does become a reality, i would look at buying stock in Better Place. they would have the emerging market for sure. one thing you have to look at, is EESU with its million cycle lifetime means that they will see market saturation because why buy another if the one you got still has another 300 years left on it?? it would be like the first japanese imports. they came over here with bullet-proof engines covered in cheap plastic. they would run for ever but by the time they hit 100,000 miles you could not hear the radio over the rattles anymore.

after the electronics are sufficiently antiquated, you get another body and swap out the EESU. i actually see EESU's becoming so valuable as the charging network matures that the cost will become so high that most people would lease them. buy the shell, lease the powerplant.

look at intel...they are the perfect example (Zenn has already announced that they will be doing the intel business model so my predictions of Zenn and GM in a partnership is wrong...but the supposition about GM having knowledge of a prototype i feel confident is correct) they did great business for years and it seemed like they would go on forever, but they hit the wall. computers finally got fast enough that it was ok to take a model that was 4-5 years old and still run most of what people wanted to do with it.

now, on paper, they can still improve performance, but the segment of computer buyers who need that performance has dropped. i remember upgrading my computers less than 6 months after a new whizz-bang product was introduced and paying a premium for it.

now i (not me, my newest computer not counting the Mac is 4 years old) put together a very decent computer using stuff that is 2-3 notches below the latest and pay less than a 3rd of what i would have paid if i got it the previous year when the technology was only a year old. so Zenn will not be bulletproof forever. but by then, they will have banked their money, invested in ancillary business ventures and be well rooted in the "monied" sector.

... BP, however... they have the business model to make the real money with no end in sight. granted they provide a service so its got to be high volume to make the money, but hey!, we all got to get there somehow

[daniel]

Dave: You are assuming several things, which as yet are not known:

The price of u-caps. Supposedly they will be cheaper than AGMs but more expensive than floodies. But that's just marketing claims. We really do not know.

The lifetime in years or cycles of u-caps. Again, they are making extreme claims, but we really know nothing.

Whether u-caps will actually be marketed in our lifetime. Some folks are sure they're around the corner, while others are more skeptical. If they do not pan out, or the mass-manufacturing of them turns out to be impractical, everything falls through.

Zenn's share of EEStor. I gather that there are investors whose share has not been made public. If it turns out that Zenn really owns a tiny part of EEStor, there could be nefarious deals that cut Zenn out of the picture. It's also possible that GM buys out EEStor in order to keep u-caps off the market. Remember NiMH batteries and the patents that preclude their use in sizes larger than in the Prius.

Competition from other companies. It's easy to compare Zenn to Intel or Apple: companies that started small and boomed. But don't forget that Intel and Apple started out in a sea of tiny companies, most of which went bust. It is not valid to compare a new investment opportunity with a company that faced and overcame a lot of competition, when your company has not yet overcome that hurdle.

In short, Zenn is a gamble. Both of you guys are smart to have limited your investment to amounts you can afford to lose. But lurkers on this thread should be aware that Zenn is not a sure thing. If it were, the market would already be pricing it at $100 a share. I might decide to put a tiny bit in it myself. But anybody who thinks they can increase their investment tenfold in a couple of years is taking a very big risk. Big risks sometimes make people fabulously rich. And they sometimes wipe people out.

With regard to Better Place, a relatively cheap u-cap (priced slightly above floodies) could destroy Better Place. BP's big selling points are that you avoid the capital cost of expensive lithium batteries, and battery-switching makes "re-fueling" fast. But u-caps could be recharged fast, reducing the appeal of battery-switching, and if they are cheap, fewer people will want to pay the energy premium that BP will have to charge to cover its capital investment. A leapfrog technology like u-caps could cut BP right out of the picture.

A better long-term investment would be electrical generation: if u-caps become a reality, a lot more people will be consuming electricity.

[Fibb222]

Originally Posted by daniel

Dave: You are assuming several things, which as yet are not known:

The price of u-caps. Supposedly they will be cheaper than AGMs but more expensive than floodies. But that's just marketing claims. We really do not know.

The lifetime in years or cycles of u-caps. Again, they are making extreme claims, but we really know nothing.

Whether u-caps will actually be marketed in our lifetime. Some folks are sure they're around the corner, while others are more skeptical. If they do not pan out, or the mass-manufacturing of them turns out to be impractical, everything falls through.

Zenn's share of EEStor. I gather that there are investors whose share has not been made public. If it turns out that Zenn really owns a tiny part of EEStor, there could be nefarious deals that cut Zenn out of the picture. It's also possible that GM buys out EEStor in order to keep u-caps off the market. Remember NiMH batteries and the patents that preclude their use in sizes larger than in the Prius.

Competition from other companies. It's easy to compare Zenn to Intel or Apple: companies that started small and boomed. But don't forget that Intel and Apple started out in a sea of tiny companies, most of which went bust. It is not valid to compare a new investment opportunity with a company that faced and overcame a lot of competition, when your company has not yet overcome that hurdle.

In short, Zenn is a gamble. Both of you guys are smart to have limited your investment to amounts you can afford to lose. But lurkers on this thread should be aware that Zenn is not a sure thing. If it were, the market would already be pricing it at $100 a share. I might decide to put a tiny bit in it myself. But anybody who thinks they can increase their investment tenfold in a couple of years is taking a very big risk. Big risks sometimes make people fabulously rich. And they sometimes wipe people out.

With regard to Better Place, a relatively cheap u-cap (priced slightly above floodies) could destroy Better Place. BP's big selling points are that you avoid the capital cost of expensive lithium batteries, and battery-switching makes "re-fueling" fast. But u-caps could be recharged fast, reducing the appeal of battery-switching, and if they are cheap, fewer people will want to pay the energy premium that BP will have to charge to cover its capital investment. A leapfrog technology like u-caps could cut BP right out of the picture.

A better long-term investment would be electrical generation: if u-caps become a reality, a lot more people will be consuming electricity.

Good post. I mostly agree with all your posts and would like to stress that no one should count on ZNN being a sure thing.

Also, if the EESU exists as advertised BP is toast. In a non-EESU world BP is fantastic, but with the EESU on the market they'll have almost nothing.

Where we differ: EESUs, if real will create an explosion in decentralized power generation. Electric Utilities will be weakened substantially when every property owner can cheaply store their own power from solar, wind, etc.