More Zenn Info...not good!!

Woot europe firts for the ZENN car

 

Can't blame them...if they can sell for a higher sticker price in Euros...

 

From what I've read, Zenn is releasing first in Europe because the certification process is "faster" there. It is kind of strange though. The US welcomes the NEC Zenn and Canada won't allow it, but when it comes to the "highway-version" apparently US procedures are more strict.

 

Anybody really believe they can market the City Car one year from now, when the key component (the EEStor ultra-capacitor) doe not even exist yet? Let's see: Actually invent the capacitor, test it, design the machinery for mass production, build the production facility, and mass produce the capacitors in time to install them in a car for fall 2009??? And even in Europe they'll have to do safety testing, even if it's less strict than the U.S.

I think ultra-capacitors may very well be the future. But I think it's silly to think they're going to be able to market a car with them in a year from now, when they still have not actually built a prototype of the capacitor.

 

We may only be arguing about terminology. By "ultra-capacitor" I am referring to capacitors with high enough capacitance to make the announced Zenn City Car possible. I am not aware of a capacitor with high enough capacitance ever having been demonstrated.

But even if the only hurdle is mass producing them, that is not a trivial task, and to announce that a car will be marketed in one year, with such a hurdle still unresolved, is in my opinion dishonest.

We are agreed that this is a very real possibility, and a great hope for the future of electric cars. We only disagree concerning what is a realistic time line for the introduction of a mass-produced car onto the market.

 

EEStor may be on the level. But it fits a business plan that makes for a very good scam, and its secrecy makes me suspicious.

Universal scam plan: Find an idea for something that everybody wants very badly, and which would require a big technological breakthrough, but which still seems plausible, and is theoretically possible. (This rules out perpetual motion machines like the water-for-gas scam.) If you are a smooth talker with sufficient charisma, you can convince people to invest big bucks in your plan. You set up a plant, hire researchers, give them a budget, and pay yourself a six-figure salary. You keep going as long as you can get people to give you money. When it finally collapses you've had some years of a really big salary and you've done nothing illegal. No pyramids; no provable fraud. You were a research company and you did research until your company went bankrupt through no fault of yours when it failed to solve the admittedly difficult problems of the technology.

I have no way of knowing if this is what EEStor is doing, or if they are legitimate. But until they actually solve the technological problems, they have no product. And without a product, it is disingenuous at best, and dishonest at worst, to announce a fixed date for the Zenn City Car to be in showrooms for sale.