"...offering ten times the energy density of lead-acid batteries at one-tenth the weight and volume."

Wait. Does that mean that it's actually 100 times the storage for the same size, or are you figuring the multiplier in twice? I mean, if it's 10 times the density, of course it's 1/10 the size, for that level of storage. If that's the case, it seems a little misleading to say it twice.

(If I get a raise from $20 to $40 an hour, and work half the hours, I'm not making twice the money in half the time, I'm making the same money in half the time.)

I've said all along this was the real deal.

Certainly hope it pans out - not a scam.

Everybody is anxiously waiting to see.

Just for argument's sake, say that EEstor is highly mismanaged, and they end up not following through with a single claim.  Would they have committed a crime?  What kind of penalties would they face?

What if they are fully aware that they will not follow through with their promises?  What kind of penalties would they be facing?

Keep in mind that NOBODY outside of EEStor has seen anything yet, not even Lockheed.  Don't count on this until you have seen it with your own eyes.

What is claimed as the EEStor invention is: “A method for making an electrical-energy storage unit comprising components fabricated by the method steps as follow…” It seems that they are claiming as their invention the method by which they combine the inventions of others.

The ceramic composition that EEStor acknowledges as their basis material is covered by Pat. 6078494 Peter Hansen – U. S. Phillips Corp. Multilayer Capacitor Comprising Barium-Titanate Doped with Silver and Rare Earth Metal. This is described as "A capacitor ... characterized by a high dielectric constant ... and a capacitance with a low voltage dependence."

It seems to me that the questions to be asked are:

Are the claims for the performance of the underlying inventions valid?

Does the performance of the combination equal the sum of the parts?

than equipping 'warfighters' with ever improved technology.
With a global war on global warming going on I think most of us would prefer new battery technology to help on that particular crusade rather than any other.
Plus ça change...

Keep in mind the customer getting the first production units off the assembly line isn't Lockheed, it's Zenn. They will be used in Zenn's NEV (neighborhood electric vehicle), so a "green" application is first on the block.

And, there might be any number of reasons that there aren't any agreements announced with more mainstream automotive companies. Maybe no car company trusts that EEStor is real. Maybe EEStor wants to have an open playing field to stimulate competition among EV and PHEV mfgs. Could be EEStor wants too big a licensing payment to exclusively cover automobiles. Maybe the "high-school-type mistakes" are really show stoppers as stated in comments for the last EEStor article like this one:

"I checked it myself to find the two classical, almost high-school-type physical mistakes:

[1] Assumption of linear permittivity for high fields, which is not true for high-permittivity insulators, in particular, this Barium Titanate powder.
[2] The alleged 12% reduction in permittivity due to the coating. "

Also we haven't seen anything like an exclusive agreement to provide power cells for  laptops or power tools. Both of which would even better with this type of power cell. Your 18v cordless drill could be recharged in 2 minuites, and would run twice as long as the battery you have now. Some new devices would show up in the market that were never cordless before.

But until EEStor delivers Zenn a working power cell, we'll just have to wait and see. Maybe Lockheed has seen something besides the patent that has been criticized here. It is possible the patent only covers key steps of reproducing their technology, but doesn't provide enough info to recreate their device.

Lots of people said Nanosolar was a scam, and would never be able to deliver their product as well. Pretty sure they were wrong on Nanosolar, might be with EEStor as well.

If the skeptics are right, EEStor has charmed another group. Not only have they pulled the wool over the eyes of Kliner Perkins and Zenn, now they have fooled Lockheed Martin as well, a company with a pretty strong background in cutting edge technology.

Why didn't you ask Zenn if THEY had seen a prototype, since Lockheed (foolishly, IMO) hasn't? So far, no one else has seen one.  Major figures in ultracap research are saying the patent assumptions about dielectric saturation for EESTOR's ceramic are flat out wrong, based on the kind of mistake made by people who haven't actually worked with the barium-titanate chemistry.

The happy-go-lucky company managers (and major stockholders) of Zenn either have or have not seen a prototype.  Which is it?

Everytime I hear this stuff about the math in the patent and experts in the field it reminds me of the Blue LED. Does anyone remember the birth of the Blue LED? It was perfected by Shuji Nakamura while working at Nichia (A small, pretty much unknown Japanese chemical company). Nakamura took a path most scientists in the field had discounted as unworkable. But this lone researcher and his hunch payed off.

---"Meanwhile, back in November 1993, Nichia announced its blue LED, promising at the same time that a blue laser was under development. Nichia's devices are made from an entirely different compound material, gallium nitride. The announcement caught the rest of the industry with its pants down. Gallium nitride had long been written off as fatally flawed. Making a diode requires both positive and negative types of material, and no one had been able to make positive-type gallium nitride."---

-----" 
Interview at: http://www.sciencewatch.com/jan-feb2000/sw_jan-feb2000_page4.htm
   SW:  What was it about zinc selenide that made it seem so superior?

   Nakamura: The crystal quality of zinc selenide is very good. The dislocation density, which is a measure of the number of defects in the crystal, was less than 10^3 per cubic centimeter. Gallium nitride was more than 10^10 per cubic centimeter. And when people wanted to make reliable LEDs and laser diodes, they knew that the dislocation density has to be lower than 10^3 or even 10^2. This is just physics.

    SW: That sounds almost insurmountable. How did you get around that defect problem?

   Nakamura: Well,first I needed a MOCVD reactor. MOCVD stands for "metal organic chemical vapor deposition." Since I had money now, I bought a commercial reactor and used it to grow gallium nitride crystals, but I couldn’t get them to grow on the substrate. So I spent two years modifying my commercial reactor and succeeded in making what I called the two-flow MOCVD reactor. Usually a MOCVD has only one gas flow. That’s a reactive gas that blows parallel to the substrate. I added another subflow, with an inactive gas blowing perpendicular to the substrate. That suppressed the large thermal convection you get when you’re trying to grow a crystal at 1,000 degrees. Using this two-flow MOCVD I succeeded in 1991 in making the highest quality of gallium nitride crystals in the world. The dislocatoin density was still 10^10. But there’s another measure of crystal quality, which is hole mobility, and I achieved a hole mobility of 200. That was a world record. The highest hole mobility ever achieved with gallium nitride was 100.

   SW:  So the two-flow MOCVD reactor was the key breakthrough?

   Nakamura: Yes—suddenly it was easy to make any type of gallium nitride. In 1991, I made n-type gallium nitride. The following year I succeeded making p-type using a thermal annealing technique. Now all gallium nitride researchers use my technique for p-type gallium nitride. Another big breakthrough was making the first single crystal of indium gallium nitride, which we needed for an emitting layer. Finally at the end of 1993, I succeeded in making the first commercial-based blue LEDs."------

Seems to me industry expert's aren't always right. Especially when they say, "this material can't do x because of y". Same was said of gallium nitride, can't make a diode because of defects. Sometimes another property can be leveraged, or the side effect of a undesirable property can be mitigated like in Blue LED. Properties of materials change when talking about the nano-scale (EEStor is using barium titanate nanoparticles). Look at carbon nanotubes, a block of carbon is weak, but a bundle of carbon nanotubes is very strong.

Keep in mind that there isn't a single advantage to EEStor to show anything to anyone outside an NDA. Can anyone name a single thing? Will you boycott their tech because they didn't prove it worked before it was commercially available? The market is so huge, they can't possibly meet demand if when they start production. They don't need to buy goodwill, or build customer confidence. By giving out information, they do risk other companies catching up to them. If you leak the key information about why it works in spite the math, how long would it be before one of the capacitor experts duplicated it? Of course this is all moot if their tech doesn't work. EEStor isn't Nichia, but it's possible that they are the next Nichia.

http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/businesses/A-F/Dell-Michael.html

Mort Topfer: Dell's Right-Hand Man

In 1994, when Michael Dell persuaded Mort Topfer to leave Motorola and come work for him, Topfer only planned to stay a few months. Topfer was fifty-seven, and he and his wife had just built a retirement home in Las Vegas, Nevada. Serving as vice chairman at Dell, however, proved a welcome challenge, and Topfer stayed in that position for five years. He helped Dell realize a prediction he made to PC Week soon after joining the company: "We are going to drive Dell to be the top 2 or 3, and maybe even No. 1 in the business."

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1936, Topfer earned a degree in physics from Brooklyn College, then took a job at RCA Laboratories, where he worked in both research and management. In 1971, he joined Motorola, where he eventually became president of the company's Land Mobile Products Sector. Dell and Topfer first met in January 1994, and the two men discussed their business philosophies for several months before Topfer came to Dell as vice chairman. In that role, Topfer handled the company's planning and manufacturing. Topfer and Dell worked together to split DCC's market into smaller segments, targeting specific products to meet each segment's unique needs.

Topfer also served as a mentor to Michael Dell, helping him cope with the demands of running a multibillion-dollar company. Even after Topfer stepped down as vice chairman in 1999, he remained one of Dell's closest advisers. He also stayed on the board of directors. In 2000, Topfer founded a new company with his sons Alan and Richard. Castletop Capital manages a $60 million fund to invest in small technology firms, mostly in Texas. Topfer is also active in civic affairs in his adopted hometown of Austin. He and his wife have given millions of dollars to local charities.

For a time, Dell was also questioned about his lack of charitable giving. In 1995, that changed when his company launched a foundation. Four years later, Dell and his wife Susan started their own foundation. The company's charitable giving focuses on children, particularly health and education. Dell's personal donations—numbering in the tens of millions of dollars—have gone to Texas libraries, theaters, and other organizations.

Observers say that Dell has matured since he began his company as a nineteen-year-old college student. Unlike some entrepreneurs, he has been able to manage the huge corporation that grew from simple roots. Part of his skill was hiring the right people. One Dell executive told Texas Monthly in 1999 that Dell has another important trait: "His willingness to listen is unbelievable. He detects insight, mines it, absorbs it all, and immediately puts it to use." Just like earlier great "self-made" business owners, Dell has inspired a new generation of Americans to follow their dream and take risks when they come across a new idea.

Am seeking comments, both pro and con, on today's (7-29-08) press release by EEStor on certain production milestones. You can view the release here.

When( if)  the EEStor will work , it will remain a serious problem for reloading.
To travel 500 km needs at least 100 kWh.If we want to reload in 6 minutes , we need a power source of 1000 kW . If the operating voltage is 400 V , we need 2500 Amps !
Pb( at least) : size of wires  !