EEStor Not Meeting Its Goals

It looks like EEStor is not meeting its goals for a testable prototype.

It’s looking pretty official that EEStor won’t be able to reach two important milestones for its automaker partner ZENN Motors by the end of 2008: delivering a prototype energy storage device and a having a third-party verify the high level of permittivity of the powders it’s using in its technology. Tyler Hamilton of Clean Break quotes a letter that Ian Clifford, the CEO of ZENN Motors, sent out this week to ZENN investors that states EEStor isn’t likely to meet either of those goals in the remaining days of 2008.

That is pretty serious. It means that the super energy density capacitor for energy storage EEStor was promising may just be a mirage or possibly even a high tech hoax.

I have written previously about EEStor at Ceramic Batteries.

According to the wiki there are more than a few sceptics although they are not named in the text.

Three technology experts hired by potential investors to investigate EEStor's technology have stated "it's not possible", "extremely unlikely that it's possible", "there's extreme skepticism", "there's nothing there", "it's ridiculous thinking", "it's beyond science fiction", and "I'm surprised that Kleiner has put money into it".

However links are provided to some of the people that make the quoted statements:

John Miller
Andrew Burke
Technology Review

It remains to be seen if this is a real breakthrough. At this point I'd have to rate it as not very likely. As one sceptic puts it: they are rating the devices they are making at their ultimate voltage. In the real world you have to rate such devices at 1/10th their ultimate voltage for long term reliability. Since power storage is related to the square of the voltage, actual real power storage in a real world application will be 1/100th the touted number. Which is not very exciting.

Cross Posted at Classical Values