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This discussion relates to Technology Review's article Better Batteries Charge Up.

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  arnetwork
  

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  08/05/2008 04:01 PM

  re zenn knowing what they are doing

  Recently the company I work for decided to look into providing electric cars for our associates. I contacted Zenn to buy some of their cars. I could not get a coherent response. All they would email me were press releases. In conversations with the City of Vancouver about other green programs I discovered that Vancouver had tried to purchase some of their existing models for a pilot program and that Zenn simply wasn't interested.
  
  Zenn's technical qualities seem to lie in the direction of hyping stock rather than delivering a consumer product.
  
  As for Lockheed Martin a device that does half what is claimed by Eestor, but ends up costing 20,000 dollars or much more each, would be perfectly suitable for many of their applications.

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    biosubs
    

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    08/10/2008 12:38 AM

    Re: re zenn knowing what they are doing

    Reply to arnetwork of 8/5/08 + general info
    
    ZENN is a Canadian company but buying a ZENN car in Canada is not easy, nor has it been legal in most or all of the country.  Transport Canada (similar to US DOT) appears to have decided that these low speed vehicles are unsafe on the same public roads with faster vehicles.  There is an on-going battle over this issue.
    
    Several weeks ago you couldn't buy a ZENN in any province in Canada.  Today I think they are legal in one or more province(s) and other province(s) will commence testing of the vehicles.  But, even if legal at this moment, will another shoe drop from Transport Canada in the next week or month?
    
    The current ZENN model uses 6 lead-acid gel cells and is governed to max 25mph.  Max range is a couple of dozen miles.  In the US, under low speed vehicle laws, it can be operated on streets where the posted speed limit is 35 mph or lower.  As opposed to Canada, you can buy and operate these cars in the US in the majority of the states (some states have not subscribed to the low speed vehicle laws).
    
    ZENN has announced that they intend to produce a City ZENN car when they have access to EEStor's capacitor.  Target specs are 80mph and over 100 mile range.  I strongly suspect that the vehicle, if ever produced, will be produced using a chassis from an established auto manufacturer with EESU and drive system by ZENN.  ZENN has also announced intention to produce a 'ZENNergy' (sp?) drive system for purchase by OEMs.
    
    If anyone wants to look, some basic specs for the EEStor EESU were published in a private placement memorandum (roughly equiv to a prospectus for a public offering) issued by ZENN a couple or a few years ago.  This doc should be available to all from the sedar.com web site.  You might also look at
    http://www.rexresearch.com/weir/weir.htm
    http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=batteries&id=20090&a=
    http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/
    http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/2008/07/richard-weir-says-permittivity-is.html
      ,  ,  ,   and about a dozen other blogs and articles
    
    The intent is to operate the EESU at 3500 volt max charge (5kv for a military or industrial version).  The energy stored in a capacitor is proportional to the square of the voltage hence the high voltage targets.
    
    Previous researchers of capacitors using barium titanate dielectrics ran into a problem of saturation of the dielectric at relatively low voltages (well below 3500 or 5000 volts as well as break-thru issues at high voltages.  Both of these issues worked to limit the energy storage to a tiny fraction of what EEStor claims for their EESU.  Since then, EEStor claims to have advanced the state of he art by using very highly purified BT, composition modified BT (by possibly introducing atoms of other elements into the crystal structure??) reducing domain size and improving polarization and possibly by other methods not presently disclosed.
    
    EEStor is a private company with no obligation to publicly disclose anything to the public.
    
    The reason ZENN has distribution rights to the EEStor EESU for automotive aps is because Ian Clifford saw fit to buy those rights from Dick Weir long before Kleiner Perkins came along.  At the time the rights were purchased, gas was cheap and EEStor was far from having a commercial product (and for all we know for sure, might still be) hence a relatively low price for an exclusive distribution right at today's gasoline prices.  Since then Kleiner has made an investment and Lockheed also has a relationship, the terms of which are not available to us ordinary citizens. Believe it or not, Kleiner and Lockheed appear to have sent considerable money and lent their good name to a project that pushes the bounds of publically known material capabilities without even having seen a prototype or proof of concept model, just Dick Weir's assurances tht the thing will work.  Yes, believe it or not.  Your choice.

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      voluntaryist
      

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      10/11/2008 06:37 PM

      Re: re zenn knowing what they are doing

      "without ever having seen a prototype or proof..."? That would be crazy! How do you know? I can't believe all of the investors could be that stupid. It is more likely that they had to agree to say nothing, including that they had seen proof. Weir seems very secretive. Could it be he sees no benefit in proving anything to non-investors until he has his final product?

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  bobgeebobgee
  

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  08/06/2008 12:36 AM

  better than perpetual motion

  Hmmm, let's see. Barium titanate crystals maintain about 5-10% of their peak dielectric constant at 3V per micron, limited by the basic geometry of the crystal. Increase that 367 times to 1100 V per micron and the peak dielectric constant suddenly changes to 200% of it's original value? Gee, I'm going to invest all of my money in Zenn. Teeheeheehahahahohoho.

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    davack
    

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    08/06/2008 09:31 AM

    Re: better than perpetual motion

    I did an anagram of your username for more entertainment value than your comment
    
    Bob Gee Ego Ebb

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      bobgeebobgee
      

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      08/07/2008 01:36 PM

      Re: better than perpetual motion

      Verbal skills obviously exceed technology comprehension.

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    nobama
    

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    09/01/2008 05:00 PM

    Re: better than perpetual motion

    eestor claims 350v per micron well bellow saturation

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  Technopete
  

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  08/06/2008 04:36 AM

  Thickness of dialectric must be wrong

  As a matter of fact the article has one point wrong.  If Eestor are designing to a breakdown voltage of 350v per micron, then the thickness will be 10 microns, not 1 micron because the published voltage of the Eestor device is 3,500v. 
  
  Though still extremely challenging, this means that the purity and grain sizes can be less stringent than a 1 micron separation of electrodes.

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    davack
    

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    08/06/2008 09:33 AM

    Re: Thickness of dialectric must be wrong

    I doubt there is a "published" voltage of the EESTOR device at 3.5KV - this is a quiet company in a quiet period - they don't actually have a product to "publish" specs.
    
    I did see the recent release point to initial targets of 350 Volts which was exceeded in testing to 1.1kV

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      GoatGuy
      

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      08/07/2008 11:00 AM

      Re: Thickness of dialectric must be wrong

      You're right, and the whole discussion is off base yet. There has been no hint of ACTUAL practical working voltages.  In the end it DOES NOT MATTER ONE BIT.  Why?  Because ultimately, the only thing that matters is the joules-per-CC of energy storage for a practical device.  If they're low voltage but huge Farads (say "5 volts") then many can be hooked in series to achieve a higher voltage. If they're high voltage, but relatively lower capacitance, then they can be hooked in parallel.  If they're between, the BOTH series and parallel.  Just basic electronics, that.
      
      But demonstrating even a tiny device that demonstrates an independently observable and calculable energy-product of over 2.5Kj/cc would be fantastic, and would cause this Old Goat to dump some hard-earned money into their stock. The 2.5Kj/cc number is "3 times lithium" (which is about 0.8Kj/cc) - which isn't my, but their claim.
      
      OK, just "show me". I'm game.  In fact, I'd become one of the best salesmen-of-stock for this firm, should such a real-world demo, INDEPENDENTLY CHECKED, be done. (it needs that independence because it is all too easy to "cheat" by changing the markings on 'reference resistors' which metrologists use to determine capacitance of test-bed capacitors)
      

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        smithsomian
        

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        08/08/2008 01:21 AM

        Re: Thickness of dialectric must be wrong

        You can't buy their stock, they're a privately held company. That's why they can get away with being so secretive. We have no idea what they've shown their actual investors in private. We can be skeptical if we want, but they simply have no reason to care what any of us think.

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      Technopete
      

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      08/08/2008 06:47 PM

      Re: Thickness of dialectric must be wrong

      The patent clearly says it is a 31F capacitor that is charged to 3,500 volts. See http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7033406.PN.&OS=PN/7033406&RS=PN/7033406.  If this is not published information I do not know what is.

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