Texas startup says it has batteries beat

Associated Press ^ | Tue Sep 4 | GRANT SLATER

[shield]

bfl

[VxH]

[GM and never see the light of day.]

Buy a V8 and get rid of oil ASAP.

[robertpaulsen]

"It takes a huge amount of energy to drive a car 500 miles."

Correct. Now, try to load all that energy into the car in just 5 minutes via a plug.

Maybe a plug into 10,000 volts with cables the size of your arm. Ain't gonna happen. Simple physics gets in the way.

[mountainlyons]

So if this thing can hold enough energy to power a car 500 miles it could short out and explode like a transformer struck by lightning. Maybe the space shuttle should look into this for a new propellant.

[Clioman]

If it SEEMS too good to be true....

[savedbygrace]

It’s done frequently. Most of the time, the purpose is to enable the holder to file an infringement claim on anyone who markets anything that actually does what the patent claim claims to do.

I’ve forgotten the name for this type of predatory patent filing.

[geopyg]

“...a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other...”

Hey - that IS the secret!

[calex59]

EEStor's secret ingredient is a material sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like a series of foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor's proprietary material.

Just a large capacitor. It says that in the article also.

[andyk]

It's a paradigm shift

Bingo!

[ANGGAPO]

I wonder how they keep it from bleeding down? I would think that would be the show stopper. Anyway, the best of luck.

[Lazamataz]

Yer sooed two.

I can has Lawyer Grammer.

[saganite]

Good news if true. The same could be said of Steorn or bubble fusion however.

[Gorzaloon]

One thing that is not often talked about is this...my experience (and I am not an EE) is that things that can be charged very quickly, can also discharge very quickly. Food for thought.

Including a defect in one dielectric layer failing catastrophically, starting a casacade of failures in adjacent layers, and converting a trillion Joules into heat energy and light without warning.

[OSHA]

meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston without gasoline.

480 miles at a generous 30MPG = 16 gallons of gas.
1 gallon = 1.3x10^8 Joules x 16 gal.= 2.1x10^9.
At 25% eff that's a total of 5x10^8 Joules/Watts required for the trip.

In five minutes? Doesn't seem likely to me.

[RightWhale]

• August 2005

  That's about when this news scrolled down FR the last time.

[saganite]

Bye bye petro-cash-cow.

Not really. Someone has to produce the electricity for electric cars. Where do you think that will come from?

[freekitty]

That is if your batteries are defective and they don’t blow up because you bought them made in China.

[TC Rider]

Hmmm, kind of like when Rockefeller and Standard Oil saved the whales...

[silentreignofheroes]

Not E,,it’s I..

[freekitty]

That should be aren’t.