Zenn Ditches Car Production Plans to Focus on EEStor Drive Train

[phantom power]

Following this soap opera is becoming a guilty pleasure. I know it's wrong, but I can't look away.

Canadian electric vehicle maker Zenn Motors has been stating its grand vision for a while: to supply a range of automakers and grid operators with energy storage technology created with partner EEStor. That’s what Zenn CEO Ian Clifford told us at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference earlier this year. But this week, Clifford seems to have accelerated those plans and told Reuters and GM-Volt that Zenn no longer plans to sell its own higher-speed electric vehicle (the cityZENN car), and will also “shift focus away” from the low-speed electric it currently sells.

Instead, Zenn will now focus on acting as a supplier to the auto industry. Working with secretive EEStor, Zenn plans to make an electric drive train, the ZENNergy Drive system, which can deliver those oh-so-controversial performance claims from EEstor: 10 times the energy of lead-acid batteries at one-tenth the weight and half the price, with the ability to move a car 400 kilometers after a 5-minute charge.

Increased competition in the electric vehicle market played a role in Zenn’s decision to not make the cityZENN car, Clifford tells Reuters. “Why people would want ZENN to become another OEM is beyond me,” Clifford told GM-Volt.

In a way, it’s a smart decision by Zenn. Young electric vehicle makers need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to build factories and mass produce EVs. Electric vehicle startups Tesla and Fisker had to turn to the Department of Energy for loans for their factory funds. But on the other hand, Zenn’s future is now even more tied to the success or failure of EEStor, which given EEStor’s secrecy and missed deadlines, is a risky play.

http://www.reuters.com/article/earth2Tech/idUS374977681620090923

[RC]

1. Yeah right...

"...the ability to move a car 400 kilometers after a 5-minute charge."

400 kilometer = 248.54847689 miles.

Can anyone calculate the amount of energy that would take? I can imagine the electrical cables would be the size of a mid size car itself.

[joshcryer]

2. Don't give much weight to EEstor, waiting for results.

They make some fantastic claims but until I see results I will hold those claims with a grain of salt.

[tinrobot]

5. The Tesla gets about 250 miles, it has a 53kWh battery.

My rough calculation to transfer 53kwh in 5 minutes requires about 1,450 amps at 440 volts.

That degree of current is difficult, impossible directly off house current, but not impossible in theory. I can see some sort of charging station that fills a capacitor/battery bank slowly off the grid, then dumps it into the car very quickly. The cables might be the diameter of a Pringles can, though.

As for EEStor's technology, sounds almost too good in the press releases, won't believe it until they demonstrate it.

[Javaman]

6. "diameter of a Pringles can"

lol no kidding, that's a lot of juice.

Just loved the description. :)

[bhikkhu]

3. Have they IPO'd already?

That's the kind of talk I recall from 2000 or so from a bunch of companies like that, who (come to find out) were more interested in attracting investor's interest than in actually building anything.

[NNadir]

4. Well, I'm sure they'll work it all out before California's 10% ZEV requirement need to be met

in 2003.

http://stuartfbrown.com/articles/Brown_Its-the-Battery-Stupid.pdf

I think I'll pick up this 1997 paper to tweak some car CULTists tomorrow:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VH8-3SX1JYR-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1029062418&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c91b0567a1713044c471aacb9654299e">Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment Volume 2, Issue 3, September 1997, Pages 157-175

Maybe I'll drive over to the library in my solar powered Tesla sports car that shows how much I give a shit about poor slobs in Nigeria who live on a continuous average power of 8 watts.