Murmurs about Revolutionary Battery

In Cedar Park, Texas, there’s a secretive company trying to develop the ‘ultracapacitor’, a game changing battery that promises high volumes and quick charging times (less than 10 minutes).

CEO Richard Weir has just broken a long silence (read the fully article on thelatest developments in EEStor’s ultracapacitor). The quest to ‘replace the electrochemical battery’ has apparently reached two important milestones.

ZENN motors, a light electric vehicle company based in Toronto, has the exclusive rights on being the first commercial application of the new battery. No timeframe has been made public.

Details seem to remain teasers. Battery experts tend to find the claims difficult to believe that EEStor have overcome the following:

• Ultracapacitors have high discharge rate (presumably this relates in some way to the breathtaking charge times). You’d charge it up at night and by the morning you’d have to do it again.
• Safety concerns with regard to high energy volumes. Weir has rebuffed these.
• There’s a counter-intuitive leap with regard to the ceramic material that makes up much if the battery. It’s generally known to be brittle and this doesn’t sit well with use in a vehicle.
• The manufacturing process requires a degree of purity that would be difficult to achieve on the production line. This seems to be one of the production milestones that Weir has hinted at.

This kind of technology would enable a car to go about 500 miles on $9 of electricity. It would also start to open the way for high-energy military applications. In other words, if EEStor change the game they’ll also bring ray guns into reality.