Chevy Volt’s batteries cowering as Eestor’s supercapacitor progresses
By Matt Jansen
An industry-shaking idea itself, the Chevy Volt is on uncertain ground as Eestor continues to make progress on its ultracapacitor battery. Eestor just announced that its technology was verified by a third party, and that the company is on track to deliver a battery capable of powering a car for 300 miles on one charge.
Eestor set a milestone last year when it worked with the same third party verifier last year, Edward D. Golla, PhD, Laboratory Director for Texas Research International. Golla has provided a chemical analysis:
The percent of the constituents crystallized in the CMBT powders ranged from 99.57% to 100.00% with the average being 99.92%. This level of crystallization provides the path for the possibility of EEStor, Inc. providing the published energy storage for present products and major advancements in energy storage for future products, according to MarketWatch.
Interestingly, even though Eestor’s battery is expected to provide 1 megajoule of energy per kilogram, gasoline packs in 45 megajoules per kilogram. Much of the energy contained in gasoline though is wasted during the combustion process, typically engines capture about 12 megajoules per kilogram from gasoline, according to Wikipedia. Lithium ion batteries clock in at .54-.72 MJ/kg.
That gap between storage capacity is exactly what Eestor is focused on building. The company has remained very secretive about its technology though, and many are remaining skeptical until they see a working prototype.
Still, compare 300 miles per charge to the Chevy Volt’s 40 and the story thickens. GM has had conversations with Eestor in the past, but no official relationship has been established. Part of that may be because of Eestor’s resistance to any publicity, especially when GM is struggling to remake its identity into one that embraces fuel efficiency.
Hopefully GM is keeping an eye on this segment for possible integration with the Chevy Volt.
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July 31st, 2008
Obviously Matt doesn’t keep up with the Volt development. If he did , he would know that GM has been in contact with EEStor, and has sketched out plans for a battery-only Volt, should something like EEStor turn out to be the real deal. ZENN Motors’ CEO Ian Clifford, Matt should also know, has license to market the capacitors to companies building a vehicle less than 1400 Kgs, which a non-range-extended Volt,
with EESTor capacitors would be, and has publicly stated that he would like to see EEStors in the Volt. Matt Jansen , as we see, is not the best source for information about the Volt or EEStor.
August 1st, 2008
I am under the impression that eestor will not be sold for hybrids. If they keep to that, we will quickly see cars flip to electric, new filling stations, and VERY fast economy, assuming that detroit decides to bring back manufactuering to America.
I find the curbweight interesting. 1400 kgs is suppose to be camry / accord size. But both of those are BIGGER than that, currently. I would expect that the volt would be the same.
August 1st, 2008
I would imagine that the Camry is in the 1400kg arena once the engine, gas tank, ect is removed.
August 1st, 2008
As Zenn Motors has exclusive rights to EEStor’s technology for all vehicles up to 1400kg weight and Zenn is the only publicly traded company or the three involved in the development of the EESU it’s pretty obvious what will happen: Zenn will get bought out by one of the major car companies and incorporated into their electric vehicle division. Unfortunately, then the EESU will disappear down the black hole of their R&D department as they try to figure out how to incorporate it into their product lines. Might be years before you see any cars built with this technology.
August 4th, 2008
“Might be years…”
Given we have yet to even see a prototype of EEStor’s technology, I would be very surprised if it reaches a production model in under a decade.
August 7th, 2008
With regards to the energy density, it seems to me that the weight of the motor needs to be included as well, since the energy in gasoline can’t be harnessed without it. You could ignore that factor if a gasoline motor weighed the same as an electric motor, but (er, am I wrong here?) an electric motor should weigh a fair bit less. Which makes the overall power density of electric look somewhat better.
September 21st, 2008
Energy storage advances again…
http://www.dailytech.com/Carbon+Breakthrough+Promises+Better+Solar+Wind+Storage/article12984.htm
Who cares about GM…they will be bankrupt by 2011.
October 30th, 2008
Bob’s right, I think, about including engine weight with gasoline weight when figuring energy density. That makes the practical gasoline available energy density much less.
November 30th, 2008
Everybody is focused on batteries, capacitors and weight used for electric vehicles. There is still a lot to be said about electric motor efficiency and motor drive efficiency. Is there anyone out there willing to speak on advances in those technologies. If you are please make it short and sweet as to not give out all our secrets to our competitive nations. We still need our jobs here.
December 21st, 2008
Err, more efficient electric motors? you mean more that current-95%-efficient ones? Why bother? There are some advances in getting them even more lighter ot cheaper, but they are so good on that front already, that it wont change how much they beat life out ice-powertrain (and on race-track it only takes about half as much as ev-power to compete with ice-power - flat torque curve sends its condolences to clutch-gears set)
And if you think you can in couple sentences “give-out” any significant research that isnt duplicated independly in 30 other places already - you’re right about worrying about your job.
And for god-sakes, why everybody bitches about range? there are so many interesting alternatives for extending range:
http://www.freepistonpower.com/
http://www.capstoneturbine.com/prodsol/solutions/other.asp
March 16th, 2009
SO MUCH FOR VOLT’S BATTERIES COWERING, AMIRITE?