TheEEStory.com

http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/2009/09/jaco...

"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."

Can someone explain this statement to me? I was under the impression that they would want to sell as many EESU's and rights agreements as possible as quickly as possible.

Sorry, I stopped reading after "He was not shown components or EESU's."

....." This being said, there are considerable markers to suggest the device will deliver as promised
and reach the market on time." .....

Pretty big statement

Mark

something that is a little different here...

We know they have layers of access, is it all the same NDA or do they have layers of NDA's?

I imagine 2 or 3 layers of access that will require different people with different levels of "kneed to know" and perhaps a new NDA for crossing each barrier. I've experienced this as executed by the military. It works quite well. One would wonder if they even use a "clearance" system. For all we know, they are using the government's clearance system at their request.

Sorry gentlemen, we have not had time or need to provide you with the proper clearance to see the component test lab.

" ** With an intermediate EESU charging unit that will not launch with the cityZENN. Charge time using a 220V outlet is expected to be considerably lower
than any chemical battery due to fundamental operating principles of capacitors vs. chemical batteries."

First time **both** how the short time charging is envisioned and how it will ship initially.

Mark

....."January 2007 ZMC amends its technology licensing agreement with EEStor: Zenn gets the exclusive rights to automobile retrofit market and gives up exclusive rights to lightweight sports cars".....

Interesting gained conversions dropped sports cars... sounds like a good deal for Zenn.

Mark

Good news is that Eestor is giving lots of tours in June and leaking interviews from June.

The bad news is that here we have yet another tour of the Eestor facility that leaves the burning question open of whether or not they actually have a working production line that produces EESUs. Ahhhhhhh..!

Lots of talk about scaling up, but no firm description of a production line that produces actual EESUs.

Maybe DW just needed more money in June to complete the production lines, so he talked to some investors on the phone (leaked out) and gave all these tours.

Love to be a fly on the wall at Eestor.

Update: Just finished the report. A very good summary of ZENN and Eestor. Be nice to have a report like this for other potential applications for Eestor because I could see EESU production ramping up much quicker than they project.

Last edited Thu, 03 Sep 2009, 12:53pm by Eeggs&Bacon

I dont know if anyBody plays starcraft but; EESTOR looks to be playing out like a no rush game where they build all gateways and when no rush over just swarm the map with higly evolved dragoon or zealots or archon or dark templars.

MASS EESTOR zergling on eesu segways and cityzenn attack

@B, super nice story!
quoting here for any future reference:

Thursday, September 3, 2009
Jacob Securities Inc. visits EEStor Production Facility

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.

Here is the report that has been filed by Jacob Securities Inc.


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?

Sphere: Related Content
Posted by B at 6:36 AM
Labels: EEStor, jacob securities, zenn motor company

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."

If so, what was the "Advanced Technology"?
The 4x improvement in polarization saturation via 45°?

What's with all this recent wave of tours, leaks and other activities? Does this mean that the veil of secrecy will be lifted soon? Maybe on September 9? Is this why Zenn is reporting at that conference on September 10?

Allowing people (Congressmen, financial (investor) types) to visit (and comment (albeit w/NDA)) the PRO-DUCK-TION facility probably says more than anything elese.

sauron wrote:

What's with all this recent wave of tours, leaks and other activities? Does this mean that the veil of secrecy will be lifted soon? Maybe on September 9? Is this why Zenn is reporting at that conference on September 10?

Sounds logical and relevant to me on these dates

Make sure to read the associated PDF report. It goes into incredible detail as to how an EESU is manufactured, down to the inks used, the screen printing steps, and the structure of the cell arrays.

where is the pdf?

sauron wrote:

What's with all this recent wave of tours, leaks and other activities? Does this mean that the veil of secrecy will be lifted soon? Maybe on September 9? Is this why Zenn is reporting at that conference on September 10?

What veil of secrecy?

hbert wrote:

where is the pdf?

Horshu wrote:

Make sure to read the associated PDF report. It goes into incredible detail as to how an EESU is manufactured, down to the inks used, the screen printing steps, and the structure of the cell arrays.

Wow, you weren't kidding. That is a lot of detail. Hopefully our SME's can make more sense of this. I haven't read the patents, but this info looks new to me.

e'er wrote:

"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."

Can someone explain this statement to me? I was under the impression that they would want to sell as many EESU's and rights agreements as possible as quickly as possible.

Sounds like someone is trying to lower expectations. Given what Dick Weir has said in the past, it seems like "flooding the market" is precisely EEStor's business strategy. In fact, the document also says

ZMC`s business plan after the cityZENN calls for a licensing model targeted at any and all OEMs.

Color me confused.

Last edited Thu, 03 Sep 2009, 12:29pm by Lensman

" ** With an intermediate EESU charging unit that will not launch with the cityZENN. Charge time using a 220V outlet is expected to be considerably lower
than any chemical battery due to fundamental operating principles of capacitors vs. chemical batteries."

Could this be a home EESU tied to the grid that flash dumps to the CityZenn EESU?

e'er wrote:

"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."


Can someone explain this statement to me? I was under the impression that they would want to sell as many EESU's and rights agreements as possible as quickly as possible.

It makes sense to me, I would think that EESTOR and ZENN would want to properly handle the available contracts that come their way, and also maintain complete control of the supply chain. EESTOR could "franchise" their factories and have other companies or entities build them, slap the EEstor logo on it, and have the secondary company give EEstor royalties. However, it is possible that EEestor may have more to gain from having control over all the supply and not franchising their product. After all, with more supply comes falling prices, which may lead to less profit.

Instead, I imagine that EEStor would process the prospective contracts one at a time and ramp up production accordingly (with their own facilities), ensuring maximum profit. You get more mileage from your car at 65 mph than you do at 80 or 20. Ramping up too quickly (or too slowly) can prove wasteful to EEStor's "bottom line".

At least that's how I interpreted this statement. Who knows, it could just be some crack-pot economic hypothesis by a college student in a completely unrelated field =) (I am, however, pursuing a minor in Business).

xcgeek wrote:

Horshu wrote:

Make sure to read the associated PDF report. It goes into incredible detail as to how an EESU is manufactured, down to the inks used, the screen printing steps, and the structure of the cell arrays.

Wow, you weren't kidding. That is a lot of detail. Hopefully our SME's can make more sense of this. I haven't read the patents, but this info looks new to me.

Just a quick review. There wasn't much new that I saw but I may have missed things

- There's a mention that they are now putting AL caps on the end of the capacitors, and no mention of silver epoxy.
- There is an acknowledgment that capacitors are more difficult to charge than batteries.

I don't think either of these are particularly significant. The first may be a misunderstanding of the process or it may be an additional detail. The second may have been felt too obvious to mention previously.

Robert

Colbey wrote:

sauron wrote:

What's with all this recent wave of tours, leaks and other activities? Does this mean that the veil of secrecy will be lifted soon? Maybe on September 9? Is this why Zenn is reporting at that conference on September 10?

What veil of secrecy?

It is completely abnormal, iresponsible and even idiotic for a company to build a production line without building prototypes first. Since EEStor didn't show prototypes to anybody then the assumption is that they have the prototypes and they work as claimed but they don't show them because they are a secretive company.

The other explanation is that they don't have the prototypes or they have them but they don't work (PROTOTYPES HAVE BEEN BUILT AND PROTOTYPES HAVE BEEN TESTED ... but they don't work) in which case they are scammers (most likely) or idiots (less likely) or both.

When I say prototypes, I don't mean a full EESU, prototype components would be enough, or even elements, hell, even cells would be great.

Kowligia wrote:

" ** With an intermediate EESU charging unit that will not launch with the cityZENN. Charge time using a 220V outlet is expected to be considerably lower
than any chemical battery due to fundamental operating principles of capacitors vs. chemical batteries."

Could this be a home EESU tied to the grid that flash dumps to the CityZenn EESU?

It certainly sounds like it. Presumably the (hypothetical) home EESU will have significantly greater capacity than the ZENNergy unit, to avoid wasting 1/2 the energy [edit: that should be half the *power*]... and therefore avoid doubling the effective cost of the charge.

Last edited Thu, 03 Sep 2009, 5:41pm by Lensman

Some VERY interesting things in that Jacob Securities report!

First and foremost, it firmly buries any idea that EEStor has a factory (full-scale production facility) in *any* stage of development. It simply doesn't exist, period. The only manufacturing facility is the pilot production line in EEStor's Cedar Park office. (And at the risk of saying "I told you so", this is what I've been saying for some time now.)

Second, it provides a very welcome hard-headed look at the realities and difficulties of EEStor ramping up to industrial-scale production... assuming they *do* manage to overcome their current difficulties with developing the pilot production line. The report projects that EEStor will not begin full-scale production until 2011.

There is a *lot* of material there... it needs to be read more than once, and carefully. And keep in mind that most of this report is based solely on public info... the same info we've already seen. I think it's fair to say that the collective wisdom of this forum has perceived a few things which the people who put together this report did not. Frex the mention (in a footnote) of a "home EESU" used to charge the CityZENN. This is not likely to be a marketed product in the foreseeable future. Any EESUs appropriate for home use would also be appropriate for grid stabilization-- and the demand surely will be higher there.

Lensman, good observations. And I agree with what you are saying. But I believe that the the reveal will enable government and business to see what an added bonus it would be to put this technology into action as swift as possible. The pilot line may be small but once its out it would be in the best interest of the country and the world to invest in this tech. In DW's own words for example having a "spare" unit attached to the grid for vehicle charging, at night 40% of the grid could be stored killing the perverbial 2 birds. Surely the government can see that if with incentives the consumer could shoulder some of the cost of expanding the grid system this would be worth investing in this technology. 2011 is a good guess on the EESU getting a foothold, but I'm betting that everyone is willing to invest in putting some people to work building manufacturing plants and employing a lot of unemployed factory workers into building a lot of EESU's.

Lensman wrote:

Kowligia wrote:

" ** With an intermediate EESU charging unit that will not launch with the cityZENN. Charge time using a 220V outlet is expected to be considerably lower
than any chemical battery due to fundamental operating principles of capacitors vs. chemical batteries."

Could this be a home EESU tied to the grid that flash dumps to the CityZenn EESU?

It certainly sounds like it. Presumably the (hypothetical) home EESU will have significantly greater capacity than the ZENNergy unit, to avoid wasting 1/2 the energy... and therefore avoid doubling the effective cost of the charge.

How many times do we have to tell you that you DO NOT LOOSE 1/2 energy when properly charging a capacitor.

Jam, I think that Lensman means that it would take a capacitor 2 times as large as the capcitor that you are charging. But the other half a charge is still in the first capacitor.

Interesting. Some intitial comments from the PDF :

Screen Printing Ink 1 (barium titanate ceramic powder, aluminum oxide, PET Plastic):

* The powder is coated with aluminum oxide, which is a very effective electrical insulator. We
assume this insulation is needed to maintain the integrity of the barium titanate at high voltages
that are applied across an EESU (high breakdown voltage rating).

I've never understood how a fully insulated material can also act as a dielectric. Maybe I slept through that lesson in Physics.

* A poly ethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic powder is also added to the ink. This is the type of
soft plastic used in soft drink bottles. It also serves as a barrier, while reducing current leakage
and the aging of the barium titanate.

Would that be current leakage from the insulating AlO2 coating?

How does the PET reduce the ageing of the Barium Titanate when it is not in contact with it?

Does BaTiO2 age?

Page 27 sums up very nicely the level of Risk associated with ZENN and Page 28 sums up the current health of the company. As we all know, ZNN is extremely high risk and very vulnarable.

Nice quote from P29 :

"One of the advantages that the ZENN LSV had in 2007 and 2008 was it
looked and operated more like a car vs. its competitors’ offerings that came across as kitted out
golf cars."

This shows a unique perspective on the market for LSVs, and looking at the balance and order sheet, it is one which is proving to be out of tune with market demand.

In addition, it is interesting to see the forecast for 2010, which I personally expected to be bullish considering the impact of EESU delivery in that time frame. An LSV with a small EESU would have a significant competitive advantage. It would also have a shorter time to market than the CityZENN. This is not shown in the figures, but is shown in the disclosure on Page 32.

Finally : "We don`t anticipate a commercial EESU unit being delivered to ZMC until the end of
calendar 2009 (i.e. December). So conceivably, we don’t expect commercial demonstrations
in earnest using EESUs until calendar second quarter of 2010".