EEStor unveils ultracapacitor-based battery system, Li-ion shudders in fear

If relying on sunlight and downhill routes in Venturi's uber-green Eclectic doesn't exactly sound feasible for your everyday (and night) errands, and your ultraportable's five hours of battery life just isn't where you think it should be, EEStor is hoping to remedy those issues -- along with basically every other battery-related quandary -- in one fell swoop. In another case of "this just can't be for realz," an elusive Texas company is coming clean about what's been happening in its labs of late, and the proclamations are nothing short of sensational. The firm boldly states that its one of a kind system, a "battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety." Moreover, this miracle-working solution is said to produce "ten times" the power of lead-acid batteries at half the cost, sans the need for "toxic materials or chemicals." Additionally, EEStor is hoping to have its Electrical Energy Storage Unit (EESU) powering the wheels of Toronto-based ZENN Motor vehicles, and if "estimates" are to be believed, it will only take about $9 worth of electricity for an EESU-propelled car to travel 500 miles, compared to nearly $60 in gasoline. Of course, such a "breakthrough" product is bound to have its fair share of naysayers, and Jim Miller, vice president of advanced transportation technologies at Maxwell Technologies, is indeed skeptical that EEStor's technology will be able to withstand the unique pressures that a vehicle would place on the "brittle" structure. But we've got to give credit to the company's vow to veer clear of hype, as it notes that this is just the first time it has come forward to intro the technology, and maintains that it will "meet all of its claims" -- guess we'll see about that, eh?

[Via The Raw Feed]

[Albert @ Jan 29th 2007 8:53PM]

Its great to see a company bring out those ultra capacitors that will finally make those lithium ions obsolete. It will be awesome to have batteries that will be safer, more powerful, and charge much faster. We're cheerin for you EEStor!!!

[Kokasov @ Jan 23rd 2007 8:03PM]

Sounds good; I'm waiting.

[Bryan @ Oct 3rd 2007 12:34AM]

I am very encouraged, not only by EEStore's claims, but by many other research groups who are also close to pushing the supercapacitor past the lithium ion batteries in terms of cost, storage, life, and charge time. If it were just EEStore I would be skeptical, but while they claim to be there now, many others are not far behind such as researchers at MIT.
http://lees.mit.edu/lees/schindall_j.htm

What gets me really excited, however, is the thought of mating this technology with another burgeoning breakthrough in solar tech.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0114_050114_solarplastic.html

If both of these technologies bear fruit just imagine the implications. Houses and buildings going completely off grid. Electric cars that never need plugging in. Virtually all of our hand-held portable devices would become self sustaining. The possibilities are mind-boggling, and the entire world would feel the impact in a very profound way.

From where I sit the future looks bright indeed.

[Josh @ Jan 23rd 2007 8:04PM]

They better make them for my Segway..

[Zhoe Garcia @ Jan 23rd 2007 8:05PM]

this sounds great. let's hope the oil biz doesn't destroy this somehow

[anonymous @ Jan 23rd 2007 8:16PM]

I'd tap that...

[Ed T @ Jan 23rd 2007 8:30PM]

Like any rechargeable battery, these supercaps will eventually wear out too. The question then is how many greenies will cough up $2K-$8K for a new battery/capacitor? Or will they just say f__k-it, and buy a diesel? Maybe if they put pictures of Algore and Prince Charlie on the box, the financial pain won't be as severe.

[Brian Schend @ Feb 24th 2007 9:49PM]

First, these eestor "energy storage units" are not technically batteries. They are capacitors, which do the same thing in a very different way. When manufactured properly, they can easily last 1 million full recharges. For a car with a 300 mile range, this is 300 million miles. EEstor is claiming their capacitors will outlast anything you put them in.

Also, they claim half the cost of lead-acid, so it wouldn't even be close to $2000 to replace it.

If they meet these claims, you'd only have to replace it when it gets wrecked, anyway.

[crzyjamaican46 @ Jan 23rd 2007 8:34PM]

I'm very skeptical but Damn I really hope this turns out to be legit. This would make even fuel cells look lame and all we would need would be electric vehicles. 10 min charge times. thats just as good as gas and ic engines. Fuel stations could easily be retrofitted for this. no new infrastructure would be needed. i wouldnt be suprised if a few bodies ended up missing. the oil companies would never stand for this.

[Chris @ Jan 23rd 2007 8:53PM]

sure, if you think hooking up 10,000 amp service to a filling station is easy

[Brian Schend @ Feb 24th 2007 9:49PM]

Fuel cells already look lame. It doesn't take a new ultracapacitor to do that.

[Peter @ Jan 23rd 2007 8:55PM]

Fantastic if true, but it looks more like a "trust us" venture capital grab.

[AndreDFR @ Jan 23rd 2007 9:02PM]

Keep her rolling!

[Christopher @ Jan 23rd 2007 9:47PM]

I hope they can deliver. It's about time something happened with battery technology besides explosions.

[crzyjamaican46 @ Jan 23rd 2007 9:28PM]

TAKEN FROM SLASHDOT.ORG NOT MY COMMENT God i luv slasdot just bcuz their are alotta geeks there that kno there shit and prove it in the comment section engadget has its fair share of geeks but we have nuthin on the best "slashdoters"

Be careful. Slashdot has been running lots of stories that are "investment opportunities". Read this, the first comment to the story linked from the Slashdot story. I didn't write it, it was written by someone with the nick Emosson, but it sounds correct. (Also, read the other comments showing skepticism of the idea.):

"Unfortunately EEStor never made and will never make the supercapacitor described in the patent [google.com] because they ignore a well known physical effect, called "dielectric saturation".

"Barium titanate has been used in capacitors for decades, due to its high dielectric constant: (PDF file) [avxcorp.com].

"However, the dielectric constant drops as the electric field strength increases:

"At a hypothetical field of 3500 Volts over a thickness of 12.76 micrometers, as proposed in the patent, the dielectric constant of barium titanate would be orders of magnitude lower than the claimed 18500, reducing capacity and energy density by the same factor...

"This has been discussed in more detail by Prof. Anatoly Moskalev on December 24th and 26th, 2006 in
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/index.php?p=43 [teslamotors.com]

"with an update on January 20th, 2007:
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/?p=46 [teslamotors.com]."

Also read this comment considerably below:

"Further evidences of EEstor's hype! by Roger Pham 1/22/2007 10:41 PM

"In his patent #7033406, Richard Weir, EEstor CEO, cited data published WAY BACK in 1985 from the Japan's Journal of Applied Physics, as basis for the high dielectric property of Barium Titanate (BaTiO3)powder, when coated with aluminum oxide and calcium magnesium aluminosilicated glass. If BaTiO3 capacitor was so good way back in the 1985, the likes of the GM EV1 would be around evey street corners since 1996, or the Prius would have been a PHEV way back in 1997!

"What held back coated BaTiO3 powder from becoming a SuperCapacitor was the fact that BaTiO3 has dielectric property that varies by nearly ten folds with just typical seasonal swing in ambient temperature, and the fact that its dielectric property drops by as much with high electrical field strength, as Emosson has brought up!"

[XGM @ Jan 23rd 2007 9:44PM]

So this means there not affected by cold ? Up here in Canada, thats what we need to be able to use more electric cars.

[Seth @ Jan 23rd 2007 9:53PM]

XGM: Actually, I don't think they are rated for extreme cold just yet. -20c max from what I understand. Not bad for most of us, but not quite good enough for you northerners (unless you live on one of the coasts).

Oh, and Jamaicanwhatever? Try LINKING TO THE COMMENT, not cut and paste. If it's not your comment, you shouldn't be submitting it. It's annoying.

[Seth @ Jan 23rd 2007 10:00PM]

Oh, and I forgot to comment regarding the question as to what response the "oil companies" will have:
Since Texaco bought Ovonics and renamed it and they have a deal with GM to make batteries for their next gen of electric and hybrid cars, I don't think they're really going to be too stressed out about losing oil revenues. They're not stupid. If they see that oil is a losing venture, they'll use some of the massive profits they've been raking in to broaden their holdings a little. What would YOU do if you were them? Conspiracies and backroom deals which could Enron you tomorrow, or just shift with the market and buy up all the battery companies you can find?

[crzyjamaican46 @ Jan 23rd 2007 10:46PM]

Seth i'm really sorry u feel that way. I'll b sure to post a link next time, and just so u know taking up space n the comments page just to bitch about something trivial and not related to TFA like that is also very annoying. The comment I reposted was very informative and quite relevant to all the skeptics out there. I'll be sure to link the comment next time just for you.

[Kent Beuchert @ Jan 23rd 2007 10:55PM]

That crack about the brittle EEStor not being up to a car's environment struck me as pretty silly.
We don't ride around in Model T Fords anymore. In
most cars we have springs and shock absorbers. If I can haul a priceless Ming vase in my back seat without fear, why should I pay any attention to concerns about an ultra capacitor's britleness?
Does this person think he's the only oe to have thought about this? Is he really that vain?

[uwjames @ Jan 23rd 2007 11:43PM]

ummm.. pardon my french, but STFU Seth. crzyjamaican's comment was the best of the bunch. Had he linked, I probably wouldn't have bothered to click.

Oh, and I'm guessing that theoretical batteries are the least of the oil company's concerns when AMD is building an empire based on US made ethanol. Ethanol of course is produced through a political-chemical reaction:

eco-paranoia + Nationalism + Lobbyists ->
subsidies + tariffs + pro-ethanol policy

[uwjames @ Jan 23rd 2007 11:52PM]

ps: call me Emmett Brown, but I believe "Mr. Fusion" is our only hope.

[ave @ Jan 27th 2007 12:06AM]

THe ev-1 was an interesting experement especially since the leaseholders want to buy the car off lease , but gm just wants to crush them all and forget about it mmmm.

Apparently the politics surrounding these electric cars seems to be biased. With the hybrid cars the oil companies can keep record profits, while convincing people of their "green" agenda.

It is my thoughts that within the future nanotech nology will reduce the overall weight of a vehicle, thus increasing ovrall gas mpg, and electric mpc. furthurmore, new advances in led technology have reduced the over all power consumption for indoor lights. Why not a vehicle's?

I am sorry if my comment seems a little fragmented, but it is late where i am. So please forgive me.

[Unc_AK @ Jan 24th 2007 1:14AM]

uh can anyone pass the kool-aid so that I can believe that electric vehicles are clean! The wool is being pulled over everyones eyes! If all these electric vehicles are clean then tell me where the electricity will come from? (from Springfield? Shelbyville?) It will come from the friendly coal plant down the street. And guess what? If everyone suddenly adopted electric vehicles then we would need a ton more nat gas, coal, nuclear power plants all over. Electric vehicles are just passing the pollution to another source. Keep believing if you want sheep.

-UA

[Lonnie McClure @ Jan 24th 2007 2:04AM]

Putting aside the typical higher efficiency of electric motors vs. combustion engines, answer me this:

Which is likely to produce less pollution per equivalent amount of energy:

(1) Large numbers of internal combustion engines hauling around the extra weight of the equipment necessary to reduce combustion pollutants.

(2) A single large power plant that doesn't move anywhere, and thus also takes the weight of the combustion polluntant reducing equipment out of the equation. Keep in mind this applies only if the plant actually burns something, and isn't a hydroelectric plant or wind farm.

Do electric vehicles often just pass the pollution to another source? Sure. Does this mean the same amount of pollution? No.

While it has nothing to do with pollution, it also doesn't hurt that electric plants rarely use fuel that has to be imported.

[Sean O @ Jan 24th 2007 5:46AM]

I can't stand ignorant morans who think electric cars are eco-unfriendly.

Vehicle fuel requires pumping stations. They need to be universal. Gas, diesel, ethenol, hydrogen. You think we're gonna have gas stations for all of them? You think a format war in the auto industry is even feasable? Then you're nuts.

Electric cars are the only 1-size fits all solution. People can "refuel" at home and the source of electricity is centralized and can come from many different sources - just like it already does.

The necessary 1st step to ending our problems is to change people's cars to electric.

Once that happens, the source of engergy is managable and changable. Fuel for electric power can be controlled at the source. Whether they be nuclear, solar, geothermal, wind, hydroelectric, natural gas, gasified coal - all preferable to burning gasoline in cars. Thousands of power plants are a lot easier to reshape than millions of gas stations.

Don't pat yourself on the back because you think you're the only one who knows where electricity comes from. Get a clue.

[bvz @ Jan 25th 2007 1:07PM]

If I want sheep I should keep believing? What would I do with those sheep?

Oh! I know! Sell them an SUV 'cause they are safe and cool :)

[Clint @ Feb 2nd 2007 10:58PM]

Unc_AK,

So what you're saying is there's no benefit in centralizing the pollution?

[s i d @ Jan 24th 2007 1:36AM]

nothing short of ZPM can satiate this power hungry world .....

[Gil @ Jan 24th 2007 5:44AM]

Arguing about this is retarded. We'll know in less than a year if they're real or not. End of story

[ethana2 @ Jan 24th 2007 6:50AM]

Hey. Nuclear is good. Sure, it has some hard to handle waste, but we could probably use it for something if we thought hard enough. Maybe nuclear afterburners. Anyway- our problem is that you can't- or shouldn't- put nuclear reactors in cars. With electric cars, this is no longer a problem. Same with solar panels. And gas.
If you're going to burn gasoline, at least do it somewhere where it can be done efficiently. Meanwhile, give ppl smart houses so that instead of always having all the lights in their houses on, the light just follows them around. Because most people don't give a crap, but smart houses have a bling factor.

[telepheedian @ Jan 24th 2007 8:53AM]

So does it require 1.21 gigawatts of energy to charge up?

[scott berfield @ Jan 24th 2007 2:22PM]

I am pretty certain that ultra-capacitors of one kind or another will replace batteries in the next 10 years. The trick is to get enough surface area. One mthod uses carbon nano-tubes and there are many other approaches being worked on. I sure like the idea of a battery replacement that charges almost instantly, has no charge memory, and doesn't use the nasty chemicals in regular batteries.

[Joel @ Jan 25th 2007 11:49AM]

www.teslamotors.com

These guys will also sell you solar panels to mount on your roof that you can then charge your car from. Total annual fuel cost? Zero. Total emissions from your car? Zero. Sure, there's a huge upfront layout for now until someone somewhere decides to sink WAY more money into making solar power efficient and feasible, but Tesla has it right start to finish. They even provide you with a universal charging kit so you can recharge from anywhere you can get electricity from.

Hydrogen is a great alternative too but is quite explosive. As mentioned in an earlier post, Ethanol is just political muse and only being used because the US makes corn ethanol. Nevermind the fact that Rice Ethanol is far more efficient. *sigh*

I believe solar + batteries = our future.

[John @ Jan 25th 2007 2:26PM]

I'm going to file this one along side "Cold Fusion."

[Technopete @ Aug 12th 2007 5:08AM]

If you look at the recent papers presented at the American Chemical Society and American Physical Society e.g.

http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR07/Event/56744

you will find that both are now accepting papers on Cold Fusion (now called Low Energy Nuclear Reactions). This is because Cold Fusion is now much more reproducible, and that using CR-39 plastic which is regularly used by physicists to detect the tracks of nuclear reaction by-products there is almost incontrovertible evidence that Cold Fusion involves nuclear reactions. This had led to a number of the more vociferous Cold Fusion critics backtracking on their opposition to it.

So your comment strictly ought to be taken to be a mild vote of confidence in Eestor!!!

[Holly Gates @ Jan 25th 2007 12:55PM]

I'm a believer in electric vehicles, but some of these claims strike me a complete bunk.

Check out http://www.electroauto.com/info/pollmyth.shtml ) for a nice, if slightly dated analysis of efficiency of EV vs. IC vehicles. Buying power as electricity rather than gasoline imposes a slightly higher price on the energy (check out
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/gaseng.html ), lets say 10% higher price.

In the article claim, they say it would cost you $60 to drive 500 miles in an IC vehicle. Lets consider you are getting 25mpg in that drive (though there are IC cars that get significantly better), so it would take 20 gallons of gas, with an implied price of $3/gallon. In the above website, the GM EV-1 is estimated to get the equivalent of 69mpg, which would mean it would burn the equivalent of 7.25 gallons to go 500 miles. With the 10% energy price premium this would put the trip cost at $24 (in electricity). So with EEStor technology, even if it had _perfect_ efficiency of charging (as opposed to 88% efficiency for batteries), the overall efficiency would only go up by 4%, which would still leave you with a trip cost of ~$23...

Maybe they have something here, though some of the other comments bring up some serious concerns about the technology. Even if it is for real in some way, it seems like the case is being significantly overstated to the point of seeming fudged. Makes me mistrust their other claims in any case.

[Technopete @ Aug 12th 2007 4:39AM]

Holly, I think you have your maths wrong somewhere.

If you take the Tesla Roadster EV battery pack of 53 KWHours, then it can go 200+ miles on this charge, so 500 miles would be around 53 * 500 / 200 = 133 KWHours. The Tesla Roadster is a light and aerodynamic sports car (0-60 in 4 seconds), so assume most cars will take 200 KWHours to go 500 miles (generous 50% uplift). Now if you assume that the car is mainly charged using off-peak (nighttime) electricity then the cost is going to be around 5 cents per KWH (an estimate based on UK rates of 2.5 pence per off-peak KWHour and approximately 2 dollars to the UK pound - but feel free to supply your local nighttime rates - I could not find these on any web site (e.g. Carolinas Duke Power).

So the cost for driving 500 miles in an EV is around 200KWH * 5 cents/ 100 = 10 dollars, not 24 dollars.

Your assumption is probably that average electricity prices should be used, but it is much more likely that home charging would be done at night (when the car is not being used), and the rate is much much cheaper because the base load power generation stations can generate electricity much cheaper than the peak-load power generation stations that have to be turned on and off all the time.

So you should compare 60 dollars with 10 dollars (not with 23 dollars). A lot of this is to do with the fact that oil is expensive compared with coal, natural gas, nuclear, hydro etc., and some is to do with the lack of efficiency of millions and millions of small individual ICE's.

[Holly Gates @ Aug 13th 2007 2:09PM]

Technopete,
You make some reasonable points here, but I think you are neglecting a few important factors:

1) You have not taken into account the efficiency of getting power into the batteries of the EV. This is listed on one of my links above (for EV1) at 88%. In your estimate you just multiplied the price/kwh at your meter times the amount of kwh you would need in your battery pack to travel 500 miles.

2) Maybe things are different where you live, but here in America as far as I know there are no widespread dynamic electricity pricing programs for retail customers. Its true that it is much less expensive for the utility to make power from baseline plants than it is for them to turn on their inefficient peak load plants, but they only pass that savings on to wholesale customers. My power costs about $0.10/kwh all the time.

There is lots of talk about dynamic power pricing for retail consumers, but so far it has not been implemented on a large scale. I think it would be great, since then you would have an incentive to turn down your air conditioner when the utility is burning coal at those peak load plants, and you could do stuff like charge your EV at night. But for now most people would not get discounted power by charging their EV at night.

So even in your estimate, if you have 88% charging efficiency and $0.10/kwh power, you end up at $22.72. Better than the $60 quoted for IC, but a lot more than the $9 listed in the story.

[Ron @ Feb 3rd 2007 10:15PM]

The chat seems to be that the EV will roll this year and it will be a Feel Good Car at less than 15,000 US$. The top speed is the big question.
In the lab they claim a million charge and
discharge cycles. But I am not betting the farm.

[k.s.surya kumar @ Feb 6th 2007 5:22AM]

I PERSONALLY THINK THAT SUCH AN INVENTION WILL BE ABOON TO DEVELOPUNG COUNTRIES LIKE INDIA

[Gypsy @ Mar 6th 2007 2:21PM]

I think fuel cells were merely met as a distraction to get people and development away from pure electric cars. CIGS solar panels have a long enough life and low enough cost, when finally mass produced that you could use an eestor powered car and charge it from a solar panel array on your carport or house. If as the manufactures claim they can make thin film solar panels to charge your eestor car for a dollar a watt the cost per mile over 10 years would be far less than currently stated. Of course demand would keep the cost higher for a while. Bring on the eestor and the sooner the better.

[tyecies @ Mar 12th 2007 3:16AM]

seeing if this works

[tyecies @ Mar 12th 2007 3:20AM]

if this is ligit, i'd say its electric cars that are the future. A much safer alternative to hydrogen (to store enough hydrogen, it has to be at ridiculously high pressure, sounds like a recipe for disaster in an accidnet), and as people have already mentioned, ethanol is shit. lets just hope its for real

[Technopete @ Aug 17th 2007 6:53PM]

Holly,

I take your point about no large-scale off-peak tariff, but have found a link to the PGE site for California http://www.pge.com/tariffs/pdf/E-9.pdf. Presumably these are the sorts of rates that are likely to be widespread if EV's took off generally in the USA, and I would bet they will, especiallly since oil prices are only going one way with increased demand from India and China. PGE quote rates of between 5 and 7 cents for off-peak depending on whether it is summer or winter (though it is difficult to decipher the tariff), so my 5 cents was not an unreasonable guess.

50% worse efficiency that the Tesla Roadster was probably too pessimistic on my part, so I'll redo the calculation with more realistic figures.

Assume a more middle-of-the-range downgrade to the Tesla Roadster efficiency of 20% rather than 50%, giving 133 * 1.2 = 160 KWH consumed by the EV electric motor per 500 miles. 20% downgrade would seem a reasonable guess for a normal saloon car doing your assumed 25 mpg (USA gallon, not imperial gallon), but an SUV would surely be worse.

The 88% efficiency of the charger and battery is not directly relevant. Tesla motors quotes 86% efficiency split between charge and battery i.e. 94% for each. You were talking about the Eestor ultracapacitor which does not have the same inefficiencies as a battery. There is no chemical energy transformation involved with Eestor, just storage of electric charge. It only loses energy as a result of direct heating of the conductors and this should be negligible, so assume 100%. Assume the charger efficiency is 94% as with the Tesla. So now we have 160 / 0.94 = 170 KWH per 500 miles.

Taking 7 cents from PGE above, then 170 KWH * 7 cents = 12 dollars per 500 miles. If your power company refuses to provide an off-peak tariff then it will cost you 10 cents per KWH still and the cost will be 17 dollars.

Tesla are quoting "less than 2 cents per mile" using the Californian E-9 off-peak rates on their web site http://www.teslamotors.com which is where $9 for 500 miles comes from. In another place on their web site (http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/charging_and_batteries.php) Tesla are saying approximately 1 cent per mile (5 dollars per 500 miles).

So I do think you are being unduly pessimistic in assuming the cost will be over 20 dollars, rather than around the 10 dollar mark. !