ZENN Motor Company Confirms EEStor's Third-Party Certified Permittivity

I love how they feel they have to phrase technical discussions
so that suits will think it's all great. What were the last
figures for these hypothetical storage units, about 3500 volts?
.
_H*

 

Well, like it or not, 'the suits' are the people directing the investment, which could make or break the project. But are you saying it's all 'vapourware' anyway?

 

we shall see.... we shall see... who knows?? i am sure they will come up with something. i read the article this morning (i have stock so i get sent news alerts) and its obvious that this story was leaked earlier because the stock has been jumping since late last week.

but still dont have a clear understanding as to what this milestone confirms?? charging speed? charge capacity? what?? it all sounds good i guess which is why i bought a little stock...guess we share see sooner or later.

 

The "milestone," according to the article, is that they have verified the permittivity of the barium titanate powder. This permittivity figure exceeds by 21% the figure Zenn specified that EEStor would have to achieve to meet the "milestone."

I do not know what "permittivity" is. Maybe Hobbit can explain it in terms us peons would understand. But I gather that they still have not actually demonstrated a capacitor.

I so desperately wish they would succeed! I want them to succeed!!! But I suspect they are scamming Zenn and whoever else has invested in them. Oh, I hope I am wrong in that. I would love it if they succeeded, and Zenn built the City car and you became a millionaire on account of your stock in Zenn. I'd buy the car (if it would go farther, on the freeway, than my Porsche) and help in my tiny way to boost your stock. But it's far cry from a successful permittivity test to a marketable capacitor.

 

Till hobbit provides a better answer, I'll provide a basic reply. Permittivity is how much charge is stored for a given electric field. Or in simpler terms, how effective the material functions as an active capacitor material at a given temperature window and at a given voltage. This test shows the basic capabilities of the raw material at a low voltage is dramatically good, but not unheard of since other supercapacitor materials are in the same ballpark.

The real important trick to know is how high of a voltage it can handle. Present supercapacitors have impressive capacitances, but cannot be operated above a couple of volts. Therefore, the total energy stored is rather small. The EEStor claim is that they can process and package the material to operate at hundreds of volts. If this is true, then an EEStor "capacitor" would store huge amounts of energy.

The validation that the permittivity is high is the easier step on the road. The ability to operate at hundreds of volts, in a finished assembly for decades, is the rub.

 

Would 'energy density' be a good way to think of it?

 

I'm glad someone else chimed in, because I'm not sure what
permittivity is and hadn't had time to google it up yet. But
clearly by context, more permittivity == more capacitance / more
energy storage, probably per volume.
.
Bottom line: energy = 1/2(C)(V^2) if I remember right... so the
more V you withstand, the *way* more energy you get to squirrel away.
.
But yes, this thing has been vapor for over two years now. I'd
love to see it succeed too, but it seems that the more advance
"this'll be the greatest" ballyhoo we hear in advance of an
actual product, the more disappointment we are set up for.
.
_H*

 

A successful capacitor in itself won't kill the gasoline car. It must be light enough and inexpensive enough that, say, 500 miles of range for a family sedan can be stored in a space that fits easily into a car without taking up too much cargo/passenger area, and for a cost that does not push the price of the car more than a little above the cost of a gas car. Then there must be a charging infrastructure so that people driving away from home can go pretty much anywhere and "fill up" their car. Fibb and some others feel that Better Place will provide that infrastructure. But the infrastructure is a prerequisite to the death of the gasoline car.

Either that, or we just run out of gas, and the gasoline car dies with or without an alternative.

 

op2:

Actually... I think this breakthrough is THE game changer...

Now if we can just keep the patents out of big oil's grip.

 

There are so many showstoppers between what a small amount of raw material shows in a lab, and what a viable finished product needs to be able to perform.
1) The material does everything it needs, but it costs a dollar a gram = business failure
2) The finished EEStor device does everything it is suppose to do. With the one extra thing that one in every 10,000 has an explosive release of all the energy in a microsecond = business failure
3) The purity levels needed are only obtainable with specialized lab equipment capable of generating 1 gram a day and production machinery is 5 years away = business failure

And these all assume that the material does what it is suppose to do. EEStor has some internal problem holding them up that they are keeping close to the vest.

 

I find it strange that the permittivity was off by 21% from expected in a mature process. Don't you? Why have a big press release for a retest of an established material with a mature process?

 

well as far as not having a capacitor, that is a myth, and someone from GM pretty let it slip that GM has been looking at a prototype for sometime now, so there are no doubt others in the mix who have simply done a much better job of keeping their mouths shut

these tests were designed to show that the prototype could be built in a factory. as with semi-conductors, its easy to build one that works like it should, but to build them in high quantity with high percentage of reliability is where intel has most of its patents. after all, how can you make billions building something that only has 3 components? well, its the process, not the product.

step 4 of the agreement is the actual delivery of a marketable capacitor... marketable means only one that can be built at a reasonable cost. as far as performance, its my understanding that there has never been a question on that issue but as we all know, with the near total lack of information, its hard to say what is what. but also, marketable means a product that can built on a large scale that can put out the same specs over and over and apparently, this cap has to be built with tolerances rivaling any nanoscale technology.

in a very very far-fetched way, it does make one theory on GM's actions, or more to the point, lack of action on the EV or hybrid front... if you had inside info on something that would battery technology obsolete, how much money would you put into an EV??

is the fact that the original release date for GM's car to "save GM" was about 6 months after the eestor cap was supposed to be ready for market??

now a good fab costs a few billion and i dont see a factory making these caps costing much less... so there has to be some very big guns behind all this, now we do have a pretty heavy-handed defense contractor with unknown (and probably unreported) government money behind it, so there definitely is a potential to have the money around.

 

there was an interview on CBS news with one of their bigwigs a few months ago and they actually mentioned eestor. now what he actually said was nothing. but when asked a follow up question about technology investments, he immediately clammed up but did say that they have been looking at "AND TESTING" various technologies for "several months" all as an alternative power train to the Volt. he did a very poor job during this segment of stumbling over his words while trying to backtrack his reference.

eestor has an unknown amount of investment dollars by unknown backers for this technology. because Zenn's agreement covers only a limited segment of the transportation landscape, it has been widely speculated that a major US and European Auto manufacturer is also involved (very much implied that no Japanese manufacturer is in the loop). they would be handling the large car, SUV, and truck platforms, etc.

now as we all know, its one thing to have a relatively unknown company like Zenn to go ga-ga over "vapor tech" but to have a major player being associated with something that has been heretofore laughed at, might not be good for their rep which is probably why they have remained secret until the very end.

either way, its still all speculation, but this most recent statement makes some pretty straight-forward, unmitigatable statements about its impact to the state of current technology. then again,

is "unmitigatable" a word?