Richard Weir Says Permittivity is Subset of Purity, Prototypes built/tested

I just spoke via phone with Dick Weir for about 5 minutes. It was a very typical conversation in the sense that he was at times jovial and others mildly irritated with me. I could tell he was determined not to let the conversation stray from simply commenting on the press release, to explain what's in there.

Blogger: some people are wondering if your use of the term "milestone" in the press release relates to investment payments or investment milestones.

RW: No. Milestones of production and chemical purity.

Blogger: Why would you issue a press release on something related to purity prior to permittivity?

RW: It all leads to that. Everything we got there is the holy grail of everything we've worked for here. Permittivity, it seems to me people overconcentrate on it. Permittivity is a subset of getting these. If you dont get these, you dont get the permittivity. If you
get these, you get the permittivity and you can set it up at very high levels. This allows us to meet present specifications but more importantly or equally, it's the pathway for future advancement. In 2007, we made a conscious corporate decision to put in our advanced technologies. Of course, thats going to take a little longer! But we did that with very good reasoning behind it. As it states there, there are some mission critical programs out there that we wanted make sure that we could meet. Now what we had (prior to our advanced technology) could certainly meet alot of the programs. Putting our advanced technologies in place...this is why we are so happy.....because this shows the success of our advanced technologies. "

Blogger: Does that mean from a production standpoint that....

(interrupting)
RW: We were [funded].....say this on the blog.....we were [funded] to put a production line in. So what we are putting in here is a production line. (production said slowly and with emphasis)

(note: Weir said "invested in" but probably reads better as "funded"?)

Blogger: Not a lab?

RW: No, we've already done all the R&D and preproduction on this a long time ago. Now our [funding is] to put a production line in. This press release was put out to tell the people of our production successes that we have had.

Blogger: I hate to bring this up because I feel like I'm pretty clear on the information that's out there in regards to what you're saying about production. But still, alot of people still think that you haven't even got a prototype.

RW: We've have made prototypes of this and those have....they were made with technologies that we had at the time. And what I'm telling the people today is in 2007 we made a corporate decision to put in more advanced technologies which we now and this data shows that we hit a home run on these technologies. Prototypes have been built and prototypes have been tested.

Blogger: tested by 3rd parties?

RW: I'm just going to say that. They've been tested and the data has been reviewed by a lot of people.

Blogger: are you following any of the discussions on the web?

RW: [scoffing] I dont follow any discussions. I get to work, get my ass to work and get things done around here. What people say has no meaning to me. What we put out there I thought was dynamite and go from there. Anyway, that's all I can say. Thank you very much.

Blogger: .....one last question, people want to know if Moore's Law.... [phone click]

Thoughts? What's my take? I think someone smarter than me should piece this together. On the one hand, we have all the skeptics beating the permittivity drum with Weir saying essentially that he's focused on production issues not lab or R&D issues. You be the judge.

Richard Weir on EEStor's announcement

Cleantech has acquired some comments from Richard Weir on yesterday's announcement:


here's the link.

thanks mrjerry

EEStor's Richard Weir on John McCain's $300Mil Prize

(Phone Ringing)

RW: Dick Weir.

Blogger: Hey Dick, this is John McCain calling. How you doing? 

RW: How you doing John?  What can I do for you?

Blogger: I was wondering, should I make that check out to you or should I make it out to EEStor?....

(laughter)

RW: Better make it out to EEStor or they'll come and get me...

Blogger: Maybe Ian Clifford should get it?

(laughter)

RW: Ahhh, no, he doesnt need it. He's rich. 

Blogger: And also, what's my cut, Dick?

(laughter)

RW: A good healthy feeling about the United States.  

That's how my conversation this morning started with Richard Weir, CEO of EEStor. ( Note: recorded here verbatim, which hopefully will satisfy some critics who think my interviews dont include enough direct quotes. ) When we spoke, he was aware of McCain's call for a $300Mil prize for any company that can create a next generation car battery.  

Blogger: All kidding aside, what do you think of this John McCain announcement?

RW: He just gave us $300Mil dollars. If he pulls it off, we get the $30oMil. Whose going to compete with us?

Blogger: I dont know. Who is your closest competitor?

RW: A123 spent $32Mil in 5-6 yrs. The price went through the ceiling. They say they get better charging time. Be careful because that's 80%. Ours is 100% charge/discharge and very very rapid. So I mean, who is going to compete with us?

Blogger: I cant think of anyone. 

RW: So we get the $300Mil. 

I asked him whether maybe Zenn Motor should get the prize and Weir explained to me that they dont build anything. :-)  I asked Weir about his politics and he was careful to be neutral but he did reveal his leanings. He did think McCain's idea was very smart.  And then he went on to share some of his thoughts on the political landscape in the context of an energy crisis.  

I asked him for an update on the permitivity tests and pointed out that when we spoke a month ago, he said news was forthcoming.  He said, "We've made significant progress since the last time we talked. Very very happy about the way things are going in our company." 

I pressed him on his recommendation last time to research what Lockheed had released on his technology and pointed out that they appear more tight lipped than he does. He laughed and then said, "It's going to happen. We're certainly happy with our progress. And EEStor is well positioned for a fast finish this year. "

In a future post, I'll share some more details on the conversation including how to do business with EEStor today...for those who think they have an application. 

In the meantime, moving forward, I'm more than a little concerned about the level and quality of comments being posted on my blog.  What we all have in common is an interest in whether or not EEStor can deliver this amazing technology. We can disagree and even be cranky about each other's assessments of this. But I'd like to ask that everyone show a little more civility and class.  My blog is like my home. If I invite you in, act like a guest.  I'm going to hold off moving to a moderated comment format for now. My guess is there are always going to be a few people who go beyond polite skepticism and issue vulgarities to ruin the atmosphere. If it keeps up, I'll have to moderate the comments.  

Interview with Richard Weir, CEO of EEStor

Last week, I was able to interview Richard Weir, President and CEO of the secretive company from Cedar Park, TX called EEStor which is working on a technology to challenge the various industries that rely on battery power: cars, gadgets, etc utilising advances they claim to have made in the field of ultracapacitors also called ultracaps.

Here is installment 1 and installment 2. Installment 3.

NOTE: I was able to interview Ian Clifford last week for 30minutes. If you are an entrepreneur or investor, I think you're going to be very interested in what he had to say.

Going into production: Part 3 Interview with Richard Weir

Part of the reason that it's difficult to appreciate the magnitude of what EEStor is working on is because everyone tends to think of our current climate being one where we have an energy problem....full stop. High demand + low supply = high energy prices....high food costs, etc etc. But, what if to move forward, we have to set aside that problem definition and start over by recognizing what is extremely apparent to seemingly only a few: our problem isn't energy sources/supplies, but rather energy storage. Think about it for a minute. You could hop in your SUV and drive it from LA to NYC on one tank of gas if only your gas tank were the size of a bus. Very inefficient but very possible. Yet, none of us ever stops to think that what is swishing around in our tanks today was once 8000 miles away buried under 8 miles of sand. Isn't it the same though and is that really what we want powering us around our way?

Enter EEStor. Solar, wind, wave and all of the other ways of acquiring energy may now finally become viable alternatives due to the one thing so many were overlooking for so long: storage is the problem more so than supply. These ideas were introduced and made clearer for me by Ian Clifford in an interview I will post soon. For now, this isn't going to sink in right away so let's come back to this and pick up where we left off with installment 3 of my interview with Richard Weir, CEO and President of EEStor. (an installment that was delayed by nothing less than 3 days of storm induced power outage at my Washington, DC area home---inside the beltway no less--we really need these ultracapacitors, don't we? )

Proof. That's what everyone--skeptics, competitors, would be consumers-- is waiting for from EEStor. Weir says that they anticipate they'll be in production in early 2009 But, when you talk to him, you notice that despite what he is saying which is essentially "be patient, we will release information when it's the proper time to do so," he is anxious to tell you what's going on. He talks quickly and the words run together so that you're sometimes hearing concepts and not sentences all delivered with a measured giddiness that is clearly detectable. At the end of my interview, just as the tones of our voices were signifying that this interview is coming to an end real soon, I asked for one more question and Weir responded, "I already gave you a ton of information!" and then he chuckled a bit. I asked if I could contact him again if I had follow up questions and again laughing, emphatic "Nope!" but then as if not to offend he says, "thanks for the interest, we'll have some information out soon."

What he is referring to is the permitivity testing being performed by a third party lab. It literally could come out any day now. Success here means, among other things, that EEStor will receive additional investment from Ian Clifford at Zenn Motors. Weir is going to need it because his biggest competitor is Maxwell, a firm with offices in San Diego, CA, Switzerland and China. They would appear to already have a big lead on EEStor in terms of commercialization of IP but for Weir, the comparison is bothersome and his response was probably his only unmeasured statement. I asked him if Maxwell was his biggest competitor and he stated, "how can they be a competitor when their cost is $13,000 per kWH?"

"And you guys beat that pretty well," I asked. "We're under lithium ion which is around $350 to $850 depending on where you're buying it from. " You hear that Maxwell? I'm reaching out to you now for a rebuttal.

He ended the interview by saying, "We'll put out another news release here soon. And that will pretty well define the direction and successes we've had to date and what we're happy about."

What we're happy about as followers of this company is that someone is working on something revolutionary and as garnered enough interest to capture the imagination.

How Fast Can You Partner?: Part 2 Interview with EEstor's Richard Weir

To understand the mindset of Richard Weir, CEO of EEStor Inc, you have to reflect on how intent he is on not allowing his intellectual property to fall into the chaos of a hype machine prior to it's delivery to the market. Keeping a low profile, as the story goes, will allow his team to complete its scientific work of proving, quite simply, that what they have can do what they say it can. It's very likely that we wouldn't know anything about EEStor if it weren't for Zenn Motor Company, who introduced us to the concept of an electric vehicle that could charge in 5 minutes and drive 400 miles. So, Weir is focused and doing his best to avoid the chaos of hype. Perfectly rational, right?

---

But what if that aversion to chaos were really stemming from that most unscientific outlook known as greedy fear? You're not familiar with greedy fear? Let me explain it to you. Let's say you're out scuba diving, maybe visiting an old wreck that's been explored countless times before by many other divers, but this time you see something no else has seen. So, you move in for a closer look and a little bit of dusting off here and there and you find yourself staring at $500 billion in gold and diamonds. After you almost drown due to improper breathing brought on by hysteria, you might feel a different form of fear. After all, you've just become one of the richest people in history. That is, if you can actually get the goods from where they are now to where they need to be so they can be liquidated and entered in to your checking account. I imagine most of us would not walk up on the beach and make a public announcement about what we found, where we found it and how we're going to begin carting it out of the water....much less build a corporate website laying everything out for remote users.

---

A more likely outcome is greedy fear and involves having a series of paranoid thoughts ranging from the frustration you might feel if a monied organization dropped anchor right over your find and began rapidly sucking out every last dime of your treasure with a giant vacuum. On the other side of things, you might wonder if anyone out there has surreptitiously learned of your find and are finishing up final walkthroughs of your pending accidental death--perhaps scheduled for next Tuesday when you're out walking your dog at 5:30am.

When Mr. Weir walks his dog, what or who might he be thinking about? "Here's what I'll tell you, this is pretty well known. We fit everything from iPods, cellphones all the way up to batteries for Bradley Tanks." So goes Weir's answer to my innocuous question as to what applications we might gain besides car batteries. Did you hear that Steve Jobs? Weir has a new battery for your iPod. Only, when you connect it to your car, it would also power the car not just the iPod. Finally, something truly insanely great! Along with the gadgets he lists, throw in toys and flashlights, etc. In other words, look for a head-on collision with any of these 330 companies. And let's not even mention the automobile or oil industry here to create real spookiness. It's easy to see how there might be alot of unhappy wealthy and organized groups of people who may not see Mr. Weir's work as a great boon.

---

And if you have all these potential enemies out there, who are you going to turn to for a little coverage in case anyone gets trigger happy? Why not team with the world's largest weapons contractor, Lockheed Martin, a company currently supplying the US Dept of Defense and Homeland Security with technology, people, and know-how. Get in real tight so that anyone who takes you on is really taking on a massive organization with connections all over government and beyond. That sounds pretty good. What does security like that cost anyway? In EEStor's case, Lockheed only asked for exclusive rights to the entire defense and homeland security industry. Done!

So, I wasn't surprised when I asked Mr. Weir to please give me something new and interesting that no one has written about, something exciting if possible. His reply? "Go back and read what Lockheed Martin said about this. I think that's very exciting. They said two things. They said it works. And they didn't say it works with this or that caveat.... they just said it works. And second, they said it could ramp up into a high volume production environment. I think that's very exciting. So go read what they said about it." In other words, go ask my big brawny, highly trained, well-armed partners what they say about it. So, I took him at his words and did reread the press release and then called the Lockheed press point of contact. That interview will be posted next week.







In summary, a pattern is emerging which may be becoming clearer to you if you want, for example, to invest in the outcome of EEStor's work. Just my opinion but, I would bet that other business deals are forthcoming that involve inking deals with large players in well established markets. EEStor seems fond of exclusive rights deals, so if you want to do business, better have the means.




So you might wonder how EEstor stacks up with Maxwell Technologies, certainly their most advanced competitor. In my next posting, Weir will comment on just that. Also, without asking, Weir provides an update on production schedule and a few personal observations.

---

To Hype or Not to Hype: Part 1 Interview with EEStor's Richard Weir

By every conservative measure if all goes well, 5yrs from now, you will be living in Richard Weir's world. Just don't tell him that because that's hype and Mr. Weir is not in the business of producing hype. Today, Mr. Weir, the CEO of EEStor Inc. and his team are narrowly focused on things that feed the scientific soul: certification testing, validation testing, proving the efficacy of capabilities, proving the scalability of manufacturing processes, the purity of chemicals and a host of other things that ordinary people don't worry about when they are driving down the road in their gas guzzling vehicles. But it's the new worries of vehicle owners pinched by the high price of gasoline that is ripening the conditions Weir finds intolerable to carrying out his self set tasks which include the small goal of producing a new type of "battery" with 10 times the capacity at 1/10th of the footprint.

Hype. Giving something more attention that it deserves. Memories of the Segway hysteria come to mind: the idea that a new invention could radically change the metropolitan landscape by eliminating the need for combustion engine vehicles (little did we know that things like doors, windows and seat belts would go too. ) Hype. A condition where news travels virally as the concept or idea of something so drastically captures the imagination of individuals that they are compelled to share what they've heard. They can't help it and it can't be stopped once it's put into motion. Today, what's on everyone's mind who doesn't shop at Neiman Marcus is the cost of gasoline.

The idea that what today costs us $373/month in fuel to get us to/from work could tommorrow cost us $16/month. (see ZennCars.com savings calculator). Ordinary humans cannot help but let the imagination run wild with "What If!?" Hello 50 inch plasma, hello stainless steel grill. Or better, hello not going into foreclosure on my house, hello feeding my kids, hello end to global economic malaise. Hype hype hype.

Does it keep Mr. Weir up at night that the success of his technology could have such a profound effect on hundreds of millions of people? "We're focused on certification and will continue to do so until we have proven first something we can talk about later" Mr. Weir says in a succinct and matter of fact tone not willing to engage in any hyperbole.

In my 10 minutes with Mr. Weir on the phone, I couldn't tell if his barage of polite "no comments" was a page out of Dean Kamen's playbook or Denny Klein's. Kamen used his organization's silence to create one of the greatest free marketing phenomenon's in history for a product that in the end is really just an interesting 2 wheeled electric skateboard. In the end, Kamen now says "hype is the enemy of innovation" but I'm sure his marketing team is still trying to wipe that strange little smile from their faces several years after the events in question. Or is it Denny Klein's playbook? The guy who received organization

crippling media coverage after he demonstrated a car that runs on water utilising hho gas. In Klein's case, it was a matter of being completely unable to continue producing on his vision due to the nonstop calling, emailing, faxing of his small staff. Some of this lead to Klein releasing a website to handle the frequent similar queries.

OFF GRID LIVING: Wind, Solar, Biodiesel

But what about EEStor, why don't they have a website to navigate around those issues?

"When we're producing batteries and everybody is happy, then we'll get a website. " A strange choice of words for the CEO of a company whose capabilities are geared towards eliminating what we today refer to as a battery with what tommorrow we will refer to as an ultracapacitor or supercapacitor or better, "does that ipod have a battery or an ultracap?" The latter being newer technology designed in large part to function similarly to the former but differing mainly in magnitude. "We just don't want to get into the hype business."

But planning and intentions do not always hold up when you're working on something so incredibly great, even your best efforts cannot prevent you from responding to one or two questions delivered rapid fire. In the next installation, we will examine Mr. Weir's weaknesses in this area which revealed in part his take on the scope of his technology, his competitors (hint: he can't find one) , EEStor's distribution strategy (expect the word proprietary) and finally, his advice on where to find the best current information on his company. Oh, and for good measure, where EEStor stands with regard to production timetables.

Interview with Richard Weir, EEStor President and CEO

I was able to get a few minutes on the phone just now with Dick Weir, CEO of EEstor Inc.  I was able to ask him about EEStor, Zenn Motor and a few interesting things like why they don't have a corporate website and what he thinks of Maxwell Technologies.  He has some interesting things to say about Lockheed Martin as well.    I will be posting excerpts of my conversation with Mr. Weir in the coming days.