Founder of Jacob Securities Inc., Sasha Jacob with former Ontario Premier Ernie Eves
I was able to interview Khurram Malik from
Jacob Securities Inc today. They released coverage of Zenn Motor Company on Sept. 2, 2009. Malik and team visited EEStor Inc. in June along with 2 other companies. They were given a tour of the production line and even saw the powders produced by it (Malik could not reveal the color of the powder as he had signed an NDA). He was not shown components or EESU's.
In the report, they predict a milestone announcement in September 2009. I asked about the source of this info and Malik points to ZMC but adds that he can't reveal any NDA information concerning certification and testing of components and EESU's. Malik admits that he isn't certain what would be announced if anything but believes that it would be a component or EESU certification. The topic of safety and certification was discussed with EEStor but Malik says that is covered by NDA. In Malik's words, "They've put quite a bit of thought into the safety aspect of it. There are technology and designs in place to address that. That's about as far as I can take that question."
Malik admits he did not have a technical person accompanying him on the visit and that there was no way to conduct a true verification of capabilities but "at the end of the day, I think myself and all of the parties down there were reasonably impressed with what we saw and heard."
The report is the most comprehensive one so far that is publicly accessible and written by someone who has visited the site. It contains, too, balanced caution as when they point out the following which I will quote at length:
If EEStor delivers there are three reasons why the world will not be revolutionized overnight:
1. ZMC and EEStor management are pragmatic people looking to maximize the return on their
investment and the reach of the technology over the long term. They will not sign deals to
just flood the market with product as quickly as possible.
2. The world is structured today along the lines of economies and societies that rely on
industries producing and consuming fossil fuels. Both in democracies and autocracies, these
very powerful industries will not just wilt away.
3. You will still need to generate electricity. And fossil fuels like coal are still the cheapest and
most prevalent fuels for power generation in the world today. So fully electric cars are not
really zero emission under most circumstances. However, there is more to a fully electric car
than simply its “green” reputation.
Finally, I asked Malik if there was anything not in the report that he might want to add. He explained that with EEStor, obviously the technology is exciting if they can produce even one of them. But for Malik, he was equally impressed with the manufacturing methodology which would allow EEStor to produce the technology at the fraction of the cost of lithium ion batteries.
"... the fact that they've built a manufacturing methodology and process which can be scaled up to produce these things at a very low cost and by using very low cost materials, it is just as important as the technology itself. When you build lithium ion batteries, it requires hundreds of millions of dollars to produce X amount of annual watt hours of production. These folks can do it at a fraction of that number in my understanding due to the screen printing technology. I think that is as impressive as the EESU itself. "
Malik spoke about scaling. He said, EEStor is not trying to build a single production line and scale it up by increasing throughput on it but rather "when they build out their commercial facility, they will add rows of production lines."
All of this recent disclosure of EEStor's increasing openness causes one to wonder if and when Kleiner Perkins may wish to finally say something about this investment in which they have a 20+% stake. How about it KPCB?
