In a tersely worded statement shouted out of a slowly moving vehicle today, EEStor's Dick Weir made plain why there's been no commercially available EESU yet, "I've been procrastinating."
Followed to the stop sign exiting the EEStor Cedar Park, TX location, a few follow up questions were answered,
"Do you think you might get on that sometime soon?"
Weir: "Well, I've got a lot things to do right now. I'm busy with Kiwanis and the church. Also, we have a team in back home that's doing some much needed painting using a new formula we derived from some of our work here. But I've basically got a ton of social obligations and events and the holidays are right around the corner. I got a new motorcycle too. That's fun. Shit man, there's just a lot going on, what can I tell you? I'll get to it eventually. You can't just sort of sit down and start commercializing breakthrough energy storage technology again like you were having a ham sandwich. I n e r t i a (said slowly and with emphasis) ok?"
But I thought you were full time working on the EEStor thing?
"I am. Sort of. Remember now, we got this thing working a long time ago. Sometimes we forget where we were and we gotta redo it all from square 2 or 3 except for the certified parts."
What's with all of these invitations to AFRL and Sandia, etc? If you've been procrastinating, why invite all those important groups?
"Frankly, it had been so long since I had called anyone on the phone, I just needed some practice to ramp up, you know? And I didn't really know what to say when they actually answered, so I just blurted out whatever came to mind, Want a demo? And of course they did but then I couldnt think of why I would even offer one so I just said, great, because I need more money. "
Well, are you going to be able to show them anything?
"Good question. We learned, through a little bit of tinkering, that the modules we have for sintering powders do a pretty good job on a Chicago style pizza pie. Now that's fully automated you see, 24x7 pizza pie manufacturing using only commercial off the shelf automation. Originally, our plan was for the pizza pies to be delivered robotically directly to my desk where Carl, myself, my son Tom and some geek we hired named Smetty....uh....Getty...no no no, Pettey....and a Dr. Pettey would consume them. But we didnt have enough buttons so we're working on disconnecting some of the powder production buttons for the pizza pies. By the way, am I the only one who still calls it a pie? It is a pie technically. "
Probably not. How did your investors like Zenn and Kleiner and big ace partner Lockheed like the modifications?
"We haven't told them yet. We're still on schedule here. When we saw the pizza pie capability, we knew we had to see where it would take us. We're almost done. We'll get back to the battery soon enough."
You know there's a lot of people who are really counting on you. I think some of them have invested some of their retirement funds in Zenn. Pizza manufacturing was never mentioned as one of your initiatives. It just seems so strange.
"Well how many of those people have ever tried alumina coated deep dish pizza?"
I'm guessing zero.
"Well find out and get back to me. I gotta run now. Don't worry about the battery. It's inna de bag mon."
Note to admired readers: Yes, once again, I got a little bored. Maybe I should just write a play and be done with it?
EEStor Inc., based in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park, claims to have made an Electrical Energy Storage Unit, or EESU, that can be charged at a much faster rate than current technology allows and can power an average-sized automobile for roughly 300 to 500 miles on a single charge — the equivalent of the drive from Dallas to Houston and back. By comparison, the new Chevrolet Volt electric car can go 40 miles per charge. If EEStor’s advanced capacitor technology works and if it becomes commercially accepted, then EEStor may become the definition of disruptive technology — or unexpected innovations — and Texas will be a big beneficiary. “This is game- changing technology,” said Tom Weir, vice president of EEStor. “We believe 2010 will be a big year for us, and we plan to stay in Texas and grow in Texas.”
