American Ceramic Society Bulletin: Zenn Installing Capacitor Bank?

A prominent academic researcher tipped me off to this article on ultracaps in the April 09 American Ceramic Society Bulletin. It includes an article on ultracaps for vehicles with a section on EEStor and Zenn Motor Company.

<--There is a photo with a caption that reads, A Zenn Motor assembly line worker installs a capacitor bank.

Check with Zenn for more info. :-)

UPDATE: Most believe the photo is simply misattributed to Zenn. I'm unavailable to doublecheck it myself with Zenn/ACS.

UPDATE #2: The publication confirmed the photo is simply mistagged. It is not a vehicle made by Zenn.

EESTOR IS REAL!!!

The updated press release today makes public the first significant 3rd party validation of EEStor's technology. There are no known dielectrics with these properties.

According to Rudyard Istivan, a competitor to EEStor Inc., "the announcement is impressive" and may cause him to rethink some of his future investments in his own company.

Temperature coefficient is an indicator of voltage coefficient in dielectrics. See audio interview at TheEEStory.com.

3rd Party SAYS EESTOR PERMITTIVITY STABLE ACROSS TEMPERATURE RANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahem....WHAT did I say??????????????????????????



http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7bBDD5090C-E3F5-49E7-AE46-83DFB05AC897%7d&siteid=nbkh



PRESS RELEASE
EEStor, Inc. Announces an Update and a Correction to Last Week's Press Release on Their Relative Permittivity Certification Results
Last update: 5:37 p.m. EDT April 27, 2009
CEDAR PARK, Texas, April 27, 2009 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- CEDAR PARK, Texas, April 27 /PRNewswire/ -- EEStor, Inc. announces an update and a correction to last week's press release on their relative permittivity certification results. The update is on temperature range certification results and also correcting the information on Dr. Edward D. Golla, Ph.D.
The third party certification tests were witnessed by Dr. Edward D. Golla, Ph.D., an independent consultant. The test results were performed on EEStor's hot pressed dielectric layers produced from both their patented and patent pending Composition Modified Barium-Titanate Powders and their production line. Dr. Edward D. Golla, Ph.D. certificated that EEStor's hot pressed dielectric layers have met and/or exceeded a relative permittivity of 22,500 over a temperature range of -20 and 65 degrees centigrade.
EEStor feels this is a huge milestone which opens the advancement of key products and services in the electrical energy storage markets of today. The automotive and renewable energy sectors are a few of the key markets that would benefit greatly with the technology.
About Dr. Edward D. Golla, Ph.D.
Edward D. Golla graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1971 with a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry. He has been an employee of and later a consultant for TRACOR Inc. Dr. Golla has also taught Chemistry and Instrumental Analysis at schools such as St. Edwards University and Southwestern University of Georgetown, TX. He has been an employee of Texas Research International since 1975 and is currently Laboratory Director at that company
Company background
EEStor, Inc. develops solid-state electrical energy storage units (EESU's) in the form of batteries and capacitors. This technology has a wide variety of application use which includes with the added benefit of being longer lasting, lighter, more powerful, and more environmentally friendly than current technology in use.
SOURCE EEStor, Inc. Copyright (C) 2009 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

The Intelligibility of EEStor’s Recent Permittivity Announcement

Now that the general public is beyond EEStor’s permittivity announcement, there is a desperate desire to grasp it’s significance. Blog and newspaper articles are almost complete repeats of the EEStor and Zenn press releases. The occasional comments quoting ZMC all have a strange lack of intelligibility to them. Thanks to skeptical scientists at TheEEStory.com, we know that permittivity as a property of a material is not itself sufficient to ascertain whether or not it will deliver the claimed energy storage. So was the market for Zenn Motor stock confused when it reacted to this announcement last week? Zenn Motor Company must now say whether or not the $700K milestone will be paid to EEStor. Later, it must announce whether it participated in the 2nd round of financing and disclose it’s total ownership stake in EEStor. This will enable everyone to see whether or not current investors like Kleiner Perkins, Mort Topfer and/or Michael Dell also invested in the second round.

To start my analysis of the announcement, I attempted to contact Ian Clifford but did not have any success. I asked Catherine Scrimgeour for help with that and in the process recorded her take on the announcement as being comparable to a sandwich, permittivity is the bun, with the toppings and meat coming afterwards..presumably energy density tests and production prototypes although Scrimgeour refused to clarify. With Clifford unavailable, I reached out to Brian Cott and found him to be unusually pleased. I would characterize him as extremely happy, confident and even a little bit relieved. I pointed out to him that on the basis of a simple permittivity test, one cannot ascertain whether or not the claimed energy density has been achieved since you also need the measurement taken at working voltage. He was plainly aware of this far too basic point to miss. I would say he was even amused to be listening to something he's probably heard plenty of times before. So I asked if he was still happy and he insisted yes. I believe I could perceive Cott smiling as he was speaking with me on the phone. So if Cott and Zenn are happy yet permittivity tested at 1volt is not scientifically significant, then what is going on here?

To find out, I contacted Dr. Ed Golla who performed the tests. He confirmed that he tested a ceramic material in the shape and size of a hockey puck. He observed the tests running at 1 volt which is a standard procedure. He mentioned that the tests occurred some time ago, possibly months. He ended the conversation by telling me that he could not disclose everything he learned in the process due to an NDA with EEStor Inc. Next, I contacted EEStor and learned they declined to comment pending further review of my request.

So on Friday, April 24th, my belief was that something more had been verified/shared with Zenn. I got an email from a user at TheEEStory.com with the theory that possibly Golla tested permittivity across multiple temperatures and that the permittivity remained stable which would be a big scientific validation of a set of EEStor’s claims. As luck would have it, EEStor skeptic and competitor Rud Istivan sent me an email 10 minutes later offering to comment on the press release. I spoke with him at length and he described what would be the standard set of tests related to permittivity. In his view, which is shared by every skeptic familiar with the science, permittivity in itself is not a measurement that establishes anything of significance since materials with this property have been found previously. The problem is the permittivity in them never stays stable across a wide range of temperatures or voltages. Due to the prior email from a user, I asked Istivan to talk about the significance of a measurement of permittivity across temperature ranges. He confirmed that it would be a major breakthrough:

B: Why is it important if the temperature changes and the permittivity stays stable?

RI: Because that would mean that it is not a Y5V class ceramic. It would be a new material. Something that is not reported anywhere in the literature.

B: why is that an indicator of the material’s ability to hold up with voltage being applied to it?

RI: That is correct. Typically as permittivity of a ceramic dielectric goes up, increases, the temperature coefficient gets worse and the voltage coefficient gets worse. The parts (capacitor materials) that have the lowest voltage and temperature coefficients, almost none, also have a permittivity on the order of 80-100-120 something like that. As the permittivity gets higher, you typically see both of these things occurring at different rates for different materials. If you don’t have as much of a temperature coefficient, it means you’re not going to have as much of a voltage coefficient if the material is like any other ceramic in the whole world. And it means you’ve discovered a whole new class of materials even if it’s a composite material. There’s nothing like that in the scientific literature anywhere that I can discover.

Istivan went on to provide 4 references in scientific literature which describe this well known relationship between temperature and voltage coefficients of Y5V ceramic material permittivities.

Armed with this new information, I went back to Dr. Golla and learned that he did in fact test permittivity at multiple temperatures. He did not indicate what temperatures. At this point something odd occurred. He stated to me that he wasn’t sure why the temperature extremes were important for EEStor’s purposes since under his view, these devices would be shielded, for example in extreme temperature settings. After my discussions with Istivan, I was prepared to inform Golla that the point of testing a multiple temperatures was less related to ruggedization issues and much more related to establishing that a new material has been discovered. There was a long pause. I informed Golla that if his measurements across temperature ranges revealed stability, then this would represent a major breakthrough as described by Rudyard Istivan. Again, a long pause. Golla then asked for literature documenting that this was the more fundamental purpose of measuring the materials in these ways. Golla indicated that the measurements at multiple temperatures would only be released with EEStor’s permission. He refused to comment any further due to his NDA with EEStor. He suggested if I wanted to learn more, I should request permission. As a result, I submitted a request to EEStor to learn whether or not they would permit Golla to reveal the rest of the data gathered in the permittivity testing.

It is my view that Golla did test permittivity across multiple temperatures and observed exactly what Istivan says has never been observed---stable permittivity across temperature range. That is my read of Golla’s responses to my queries on this point. Further, I believe it is the existence of this additional data along with possibly evens more data of a similar purpose which ultimately accounts for the happiness of Zenn Motor Company following the permittivity press releases.

Note: I could be wrong. I could be misreading Golla and ZMC. However, I feel confident I am not. If I am correct, this would be the first major 3rd party validation of a key subset of EEStor's claims about it's development of a breakthrough energy storage system.

In later posts, I will provide additional commentary in the form of juvenile gloating. Stay tuned.

EEStor Bloggertivity Announcement

The EEStor blogger has observed that a new announcement from EEStor Inc. has hit the wire. Curious question about this latest announcement: what does it really mean? Does it bode well for EEStor believers or does it play into the claws of EEStor skeptics? The EEStor blogger knows.

THE EESTOR BLOGGER KNOWS!!!

But what's the rush? There's so many other bloggers and reporters out there working diligently to figure out the puzzle. Surely, there's no need for the EEStor blogger to enlighten anyone. It's all so transparent and easy to decipher. Why, just look at the market movement of the Zenn Motor Company. Surely the market has it right, RIGHT? Right?

Tick-tick-tick-tick....tick-tick-tick-tick.

http://nyumbani.org/

Senators Doing Something EEnteresting

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/biztech/04/23/alternative.energy.vehicles/index.html

"For now, however, drivers might still be impressed by the ZENN, a little car claiming 280 miles per gallon. The car's cruising range of about 40 miles translates to about 280 miles per gallon, according to the Canadian automaker.
"ZENN" stands for Zero Emission No Noise, said a worker who was buffing away some tree pollen that had settled on the car during the breezy afternoon. The car's top speed is about that of a strong gust of wind -- 35 mph.
"It's supposed to be your third car in the driveway," explained ZENN spokesman Daniel Stiller. "Most people drive less than 20 miles from home on streets with speed limits of 35 miles per hour or less."
He acknowledged that the car may qualify as street-legal only on local, low-speed roads. But Stiller said the ZENN is a dramatic improvement in both safety and driveability, compared with the golf carts often seen around retirement communities."

Permittivity Announced

EEStor, Inc. Announces Relative Permittivity Certification of 2009-04-22 19:49:36.589 GMT
EEStor, Inc. Announces Relative Permittivity Certification of Their Composition Modified Barium-Titanate Powders
PR Newswire
CEDAR PARK, Texas, April 22
CEDAR PARK, Texas, April 22 /PRNewswire/ -- EEStor, Inc. announces relative permittivity certification of their Composition Modified Barium-Titanate powders. The third party certification tests were performed by Texas Research International's Dr. Edward G. Golla, PhD., Laboratory Director. He has certificated that EEStor's patented and patent pending Composition Modified Barium-Titanate Powders have met and/or exceeded a relative permittivity of 22,500.
EEStor feels this is a huge milestone which opens the advancement of key products and services in the electrical energy storage markets of today. The automotive and renewable energy sectors are a few of the key markets that would benefit greatly with the technology.
Company background
EEStor, Inc. develops solid-state electrical energy storage units (EESU's) in the form of batteries and capacitors. This technology has a wide variety of application use which includes with the added benefit of being longer lasting, lighter, more powerful, and more environmentally friendly than current technology in use.
SOURCE EEStor, Inc.
Contact: Richard D. Weir, President and CEO of EEStor, Inc., +1-512-259-7601, Info@eestor.us -0- Apr/22/2009 19:49 GMT

Zenn Says NNNN

 

Zenn Motor issued a comment on recent trading activity of it's stock:

ZENN Motor Company Comments on Recent Trading Activity

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - April 21, 2009) - ZENN Motor Company Inc. (TSX VENTURE:ZNN)(the "Company") has been requested by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) to comment on the recent increased trading activity in the Company's common shares on the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company is not aware of any material change in its business or affairs that has not been announced that would account for the recent increase in volume or price. Progress continues to be made on the initiatives outlined by management at the Company's annual shareholders' meeting held on March 25, 2009 including, working with governments to obtain funding or subsidies for the Company's products, obtaining a market-leading energy storage solution for the Company's products and concluding definitive arrangements with an OEM for the manufacture of the cityZENN and LSV host vehicle platforms however, none of these initiatives have advanced to a point where public disclosure is warranted. If and when any of these initiatives progresses to a point where a public announcement is warranted, the Company intends to immediately issue an appropriate news release. 

ABOUT ZENN MOTOR COMPANY

www.ZENNcars.com

ZENN Motor Company, Toronto, Canada, is dedicated to being the global leader in zero emission transportation solutions for markets around the world. Driven by quality, ingenuity, and a philosophy of social responsibility, the ZMC team is redefining what is possible in both urban and business fleet transportation. 

The ZENN^TM (Zero Emission No Noise) provides an excellent alternative transportation solution for environmentally conscious drivers who want to dramatically reduce their operating costs and free themselves from dependence on oil. The current ZENN low speed vehicle is perfect for urban commuters and commercial fleets such as resorts, gated communities, airports, college and business campuses, municipalities, and parks and is sold through a network of retailers across the United States and directly by the Company in Quebec. 

The planned commercialization and implementation of the ultra capacitor being developed by ZENN Motor Company's strategic partner EEStor, Inc., is expected to enable future ZMC vehicles and ZENNergy^TM drivetrain powered vehicles to travel at speeds and distances similar to internal combustion powered vehicles but at a fraction of the cost and with zero emissions! 

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Ian Clifford On Tour

If you've been scratching your head about the recent movement of Zenn Motor's stock the past two trading days AND you live in Southern California, perhaps you could pay a visit to Ian Clifford who will be speaking at Fortune's Brainstorm Green 2009.

I recommend you take an ECO-LIMO to the event. Why? For a variety of reasons but mainly because you don't have the guts to travel there in a GIGANTIC dump truck.

It's interesting to see a Zenn car pictured in an Edmunds.com blog post about William Clay Ford II. I've often mentioned that I believe Ford will be the first large manufacturer to be able to utilize EEStor technology. 



Fortune

2:00–3:00 PM

CONCURRENT SESSIONS

1. BUILDING A BETTER BATTERY

Moderator:
Brian Dumaine, Global Editor, Fortune

Confirmed Speakers:
Mike Andrew, Director of Government, Affairs and External Communications, Hybrid Battery Systems, Johnson Controls, Inc.
Ian Clifford, Chief Executive Officer, Zenn Motor Co.
Charles Gassenheimer, Chairman and CEO, Ener1, Inc.
Li Lu, Founder and General Partner, LL Investment Partners

Confusion over Zenn Stock Activity

There's been a bit of an uptick in the trading of Zenn Motor's Stock fueling speculation that some sort of announcement may be about to pop. Then again, we've been there before.

An uptick in activity prior to a confusing announcement? Or a confusing uptick prior to a clear announcement?Or an announcement that there's no announcement? What's your bet? Oh, you want to play it each of the ways. Ok.

I'll join you this time.

Forum Backup Test

this is a test of theEEStory.com backup system. this is only a test.

Ian Clifford Again With The EEStor Is Ready Stuff :-)

Ian Clifford out there......AGAIN......warning everyone that EEStor is on the way. 

The link is here. 

Did you understand that?  EESTOR IS COMING!  Yo!  I'm talking to you!!!! It ***IS*** coming!

You want proof, Mr Science Fancy Pants?   Ok, I'll give you proof.   The EESTOR blogger declares that Ian Clifford was wearing a POST-PERMITTIVITY shirt.       ?       That's right! A CEO could only sport that shirt POST-PERMITTIVITY.  Laugh it up.   A Pre-Permittivity CEO would NEVER  wear that particular nice shirt to gain serious consideration. Never.  Post-Permittivity.  [nodding as I say that]

AHEM:  Andrew Bell & Kim Parlee. There should be NO smirking while interviewing one of the world's next great technological leaders. Kim,  no no no no.   

    

Lots of Lithium Ion Companies Lining up for Government Funding

Several EEStor competitors in the lithium ion world have worked tirelessly recently to position themselves to receive government loans/grants to speed the development of their production capabilities. 

<-- The EEStor Blogger's take. 

EEStor Bunny Visits Lockheed

In it's April 2009 employee newsletter, Lockheed Martin has reiterated support for EEStor Inc.'s technology. They are reporting it as having an energy density that is 100X of lead acid.

"Looking ahead, the MFC Power

Management team plans to incorporate

new battery technologies into its products

as they become available. It has

partnered with EEStor, a small company

that has patented ultra-capacitor technology

that MFC believes could be a

game-changing technology in the power

management field. EEStor technology

could provide 10 times the energy density

of lead acid batteries at 1/10th the

weight and volume."

Good-bye Saudi Arabia! Hello, Bolivia!

If you're one of those companies planning to make a large bid for Department of Energy loans/grants to build out your lithium ion battery factory, perhaps in Michigan, you might want to submit your application with stamped approval from the government of Bolivia. They will be your new bosses for the next 500 years (according to them).... if EEStor's technology is not validated by Lockheed Martin Inc.

Michigan vs Boliva in a Battery Profit Investment Battle. Who will win? Dick Weir maybe?

Finally!!!

Great interview, Mr. EEStor blogger! Bravo!

http://theeestory.com/articles/133

Help Wanted: Lockheed Martin's Disruptive Job Posting Hints EEStor

Lockheed Martin is seeking a program manager who can grow a new business unit from nothing to over $100Mil. The good news is the successful candidate will have "disruptive technology" enabling them to "break into new markets" in the "Power Management arena" consisting of generation, storagEE, and delivery.

Job Posting Here

Job Posting Discussion Here

I choose to believe the disruptive technology mentioned therein is only one thing: EEStor!

Note to Lockheed: You have abused the phrase "disruptive technology" in your job description. EEStor's technology is not disruptive in the Clayton Christensen sense. While it is simpler & cheaper, it offers MORE not LESS capability. A Zenn Motor NEV is disruptive. A Tata Nano is disruptive. But an EESU: it is R E V O L U T I O N A R Y! Revolutionary technologies do not compete in markets the way disruptive ones do. Instead revolutionary technologies DESTROY existing markets. The automobile, the telephone, the airplane. See where I'm going with this Lockheed Martin?