Zenn gearing up for EEStor-powered car

Although I am a biofuels guy living in Toronto. I think that Ian is on to something. While I don't profess to be an expert this technology is coming along.

In 2003 Students used this technology in drag racing:
http://www.megawattmotorworks.com/display.asp?dismode=article&artid=250

Last year Toyota used it also.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-dark-horse-in-race-to&catID=1&pageNumber=1

The interesting thing here is that this technology is lighter and potentially safer because the capacitors are made of carbon not dangerous chemicals or heavy metals.

Quick recharge of an entire pack would require some beefy couplings between the recharger and the car, carefully designed to mate smoothly and safely even in less-than-optimal ambient conditions; we're talking about a LOT of energy flowing in a very short time, and the voltages and currents will be high. It will be interesting to see how ZENN works that out.

As long as the EESTOR pack is as small, light, and cheap as is being claimed, it is reasonable to assume that you might keep one at home to be trickle-charged at leisure, and then either swap it for the depleted one in your car, or couple them together for a quick exchange of energy.

Quick-charge for more conventional batteries would be trickier, because the strategy of having a duplicate and trickle-charging it at home wouldn't be as practical: the redundant pack would cost a LOT more and eventually need to be replaced. It would probably be a better approach to simply tap the mains for a high-voltage, high-current charge circuit. That would certainly be a possible option for commercial charging stations along the interstate freeways (serving long-haul travelers), for example. But going that route means you have to solve the problem of safe "plug-in" to a high-voltage, hi-current source in damp, wet, or dusty conditions: that doesn't sound like a scenario that would allow the motorist to "self-serve."

Just having a storage unit like this does indeed change the game, and make a lot of options practical that couldn't even be considered before. I like the list of implications that one poster gave us above. Let's think of other changes in the world that the eestor unit, if real, might cause (or enable).

This stock is all about the news. Look at tesla and what it takes to get a car into production and on the road. They still only have 1 unit done and have been in "regular production" since March 17th. To think any company _ANY COMPANY_ could get a car to market in that short of time is complete nonsense. Even GM proportedly pushing 1 billion dollars into Volt to hit 2010 may not do it. I own zenn on the off chance Eestor is real but zenn the company just pisses me off. They release nonsense PR constantly. They are as bad a ZAP. If I could buy Eestor directly I would but for now, Zenn is the only way in. If Eestor is not real, this stock is going to tank badly but it is a risk I am willing to take. If Eestor is real, this is a world changer! The applications are endless. Even if they don't hit the densisty it would be very useful just for regen braking and peak storage (li can only take charges so quickly so often you would have to burn off generated power). Also for bursty storage you are better off not cycling the main cells because of their fixed number of cycles. Interesting times...

i am not a expert but if this is right whe are in for quite a ride, but it looks to goud to be. big oil companies and gouverment have for now lots to louse.
if its true the only way to make it apend is to talk about it in the media on the steets make demonstration of the technologie in public area tv station billbords t-shirts any thing ta will keap the subjet alive before the big man cuts it off.

SO LETS TALK ABOUT IT AND DONT STOP!!!!

jacques pelletier
sherbrooke quebec canada
jacquesetsylvie@videotron.ca

Nothing to talk about yet. When (if) the first eestor units are installed in vehicles then let the chatter begin. Most car companies now know they will be able to sell a plug in vehicle so the demand for eesu units will be steady and high.
I am certain that big oil, car manufactuters and gov't do not have the ability to squash UC and emerging battery technology but I am sure they know it will be the beginning of the end. The longer they can drag out the transition the better chance they have of being players but even this is fleeting because oil companies and car companies currently do not have any particular qualifications to built electric vehicles or supply them with fuel. EVs will be sold or leased as components online. They will be composed of plug and play modules by hundreds of manufacturers. These vehicles will allow swapping of leased components for diverse purposes Like adding on a pickup bed or pontoons etc). Personally I would unload any stock in oil companies soon.

No one really knows if this technology is real yet. But if it is not, it will be in a few years. EESTOR is not the only entity working on better ultra capacitors. MIT is doing research with carbon nanotubes towards the same end. As soon as this technology is available, I will purchase a car that is equipped with it, as well as extra capacitors for my house and solar panels to charge them all day. When you get home, dump the charge stored into the car's capacitor and completely remove the electric companies from the picture.

I'm not smart enough to work out who will build a better "battery" (energy storage unit that can be made cheaply and still power a car for 500km). Maybe EESTOR, maybe MIT maybe improved Li ion?

What I am sure of is that someone will do it, and it won't be long before it happens. Never mind hybrid vehicles, energy independence etc mobile phones, iPhone, PCs etc will continue to drive R&D in this area.

So WHEN it happens I agree that big oil is in for a shock. Energy source shifts from transport fuels to fixed power generation.

I think it is much easier to try to work out who will be the big winners when this happens? Power generators? Companies who build power generation infrastructure? Suppliers of Copper, Aluminium, coal? Interested in others thoughts on this..

I have been in the busisness of capacitors for decades, and in my opinion, this technology is not real. It violates two laws of physics, and has a dozen practical reasons why it cant fly.

One cannot mix BT (K>20,000) and glass or plastic (K<10), and retain the initial permittivity. The mixing rule is logarithmic, so the K will be less then 100.

The BT gets its high dielectric constant from an assymetry in the crystal. When in a high field, the charges move, and the K drops. All other BT ceramics in this region would drop to 10%, if they could take the voltage stress, which they cannot. This phenomena, dielectric saturation, has tripped up a lot of bright ideas. The energy equation E=0.5CV^2 only for linear dielectrics over short ranges, which this BT compound is far from being.

So, believe what you will, but invest wisely.

In the past the CEO Ian from ZENN has indicated he has been driving a ZENN vehicle with the EEStor Ultra-Capacitor in it. They tried to kill these UT's but at 1 million recharges they gave up. The implication are no oil changes or gas, all you do is brakes, tires, and every 250,000 miles you replace a motor that may take 4 or 5 bolts to replace and keep on going. No government wants this because they cannot TAX it by the gallon, pound, or liter. Think about why all this technology hasn't come about sooner: it is TAX revenue. Do the math gallons of gas each country consumes times $1 EACH DAY of the year. Why do you think that the US politicians want to drill all over the US now.....that would keep that all that TAX money flowing.

Everyone knows the laws of electrodynamics are changing in 2009 to allow impossible permittivity, EESTOR is perfectly positioned for this.

I've developed a transportation technology that requires no oil or electricity! I have the basic physics 50% worked out. I just need some investors to help me with the other 50% of the problem. I can't get the uphill part to work.
Any takers? Lockheed...you listening?

Oil prices will drop, and electric cars will never be practical without great leaps in energy storage technology. As for Peak Oil, geologists have confirned that it took roughly 100 years to utilize 1 trillion barrels of oil, geologists have also confirmed that there can be anywhere between 4-5.8 trillion left. With extraction techniques today, and increased efficiency in the utilization of petroleum based products today, i.e.
recycling and fuel efficient machines, there is at the very least another 50-60 years before we need to sweat.

This is not a linear plot of consumption people, it is non-linear, and therefore to predict statistically. Statistics, for the majority, are based upon linear approximation. You cannot statically profile a dynamic equation. In the 1970'S the world's top scientists said we were heading for an ice age, now we are heading for a meltdown, come on. It's 90% Political propoganda. Abide by the simple rule of thumb that history repeats itself, aka people are wrong, "The World is Flat!".

As far as EV's relieving us from our foreign dependency on oil, and oil in general. It would merely scrape the surface of our dependence on oil. Every industrial process known to man involves oil in one way or another, wether it's utilized for energy or lubrication or material composition. Automobiles are just the tip of the iceberg. It's going to take leaps and bounds in technological adnvancemnt to get away from oil.

Right now my money is on the Canadians (gulp!) as a couple kids up there took the INITIATIVE to build their own electric car for $674. Whether EEStor or the latest battery, electric vehicles will only take off slowly because most consumers won't accept the range constraint (though ACTUAL performance of the EEStor cap would change that, as the "5-minute recharge" would be acceptable to the vacation or long-haul driver). Otherwise, hybrids need to go plug-in (already being hacked) to straddle the market.
What I'm looking for (down here where the sun shines) is meaningful photovoltaics built into the cars' skin (to allow solar recharging while the car sits between commutes) and practical retrofit conversion schemes to hybridize existing hogs.
Short of a practical plug-in (the cityZENN or a good plug-in hybrid), the move away from oil would have to be legislated or it would not move faster than a glacial pace - and any significant success of hybrids would kill their impetus (by reducing demand for oil, and thus reducing oil prices). Most consumers would just go back to living the way they did. Remember the 50mpg Civic? It no longer exists because people buy what they WANT; not what they need. (I survived gas rationing, and remember how oil went up in the late 70s. The oil men said it would never go down; when it did, so did the banks. Oil prices are cyclic like most commodities.)

Hydrogen is LOW DENSITY as an energy source, which means it SUCKS, and it has to be derived from something. Cellulosic biomass conversion would take advantage of something we already have an excess of - yard waste, sawdust, waste paper, garbage (think "Back to the Future" DeLorean after the update). Until this becomes reality, ethanol is impractical - and would not even be discussed here if primaries had not occurred first in major corn-producing states.

When indium-based multilayer photovoltaics become economically available, their higher efficacy (a theoretical maximum 70% energy capture!) could really make the solar-powered car feasible. right now you have to go to Mars - literally! - to find these photovoltaics (they are the reason the Mars rovers did not die after 4 months, but cost millions.

In the meantime - do it YOURSELF! (e.g., see www.electricmotion.org for plans, parts list and pictures of an actual 45 mph DIY electric motorcycle that uses a scheme very much like - perhaps inspired by? - the ZENN.) Build or hack; just get it done!

To all who are enamored of ultracaps I suggest that you take a few hours (days)and discover for yourself what problems there are to using capacitors for energy storage. The way to use most of the energy is to employ very high voltages and then devise a controller that can buck down from those high voltages to lower, motor voltages, then when the capacitor voltage is lower than the motor voltage, boost the voltage up. These are no minor technical challenges. The capacitor itself is something ordinary people need to get a handle on. High voltages produce high stresses on the materials. Remember, electrons repel each other in a capacitor. If you haven't seen ordinary capacitors explode then you really have no idea of the kinds of challenges these devices present. Vaporware? maybe, but I'm hoping the material scientists are taking all this time to perfect a breakthrough, not the entrepreneurs are taking all this time to maximize their capital before going bankrupt, that would be sad.

I belive lets get going.Bring on the Zenn Electric Cars.

Seriously?
For all those that think eestor will ever produce what they claim;

I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. This company has been a scam from the word go.

It is now almost mid-April of 2009. Eestor still has nothing to show regarding their ultracapacitor, and the Zenn Motor Company has nothing to show regarding their highway capable cityZenn.

After several years of patient expectation from the public, it is beginning to look like our hopes are dashed and all of this may be nothing more than wishful thinking.

I am very disappointed.