In the field of electric cars, besides the Chevy Volt, another topic has long been of interest to me, as well as many others.

It is the work of a small secretive Cedar Park Texas company called EEStor, Inc.

The company was founded by a man named Dick Weir who has longstanding experience and expertise in computer disc manufacturing.  He partnered with a man named Carl Nelson who has extensive knoweldge and experience with ceramic materials science going back to the 1950s.

Together they invented an entity known as the EESU.  This is a device composed of a scalable array of thousands of specialized supercapacitors.  Those super-capacitors, or components as EEStor calls them, would be manufactured using a specialized material called alumina-coated barium titanate.  This newly fabricated/discovered material has been shown to have a high electrical permittivity (ability to hold electrons) across a wide range of temperature. The number of components dictates the storage potential of the resulting battery. The EV prototype uses 32,000 components and can store 52 kwh.

In theory, these batteries could be built to virtually any size, and could even be used for grid-leveling and in fast-charging stations.

EEStor has partnered with a Canadian company called Zenn Motors who has provided millions of dollars in financial support to EEStor in exchnge for 10% partnership and rights to use the technology in electric vehicles.

Since forming in 2006, Zenn has been a manufacturer of low speed neighborhood electric vehicles.  They just announced they will cease those operations in April 2010 to turn their entire focus on selling EEStor-powered drivetrains, called ZENNergy powertrains to other OEMs.

The only problem is no known EESU has ever been publicly seen or demonstrated.

Furthermore the dates for its revelation have been slipping since late 2007 when it was first publicly promised.  The most recent and intense promise published is that the first devices would be delivered to Zenn this month.

“EEStor has publicly indicated an objective of delivering functional technology to ZMC by the end of the calendar year,” said Zenn spokesperson Catherine Scrimgeour told GM-Volt in October. “ZMC is confident in their ability to meet that objective.”

The world waits.

Why is this so important?

The vehicular EESU would hold 52 kwh of energy, in a package that weighs under 300 pounds, could be recharged in 5 minutes, and would not degrade over time.  The CEO of Zenn even publicly declared recently that 1 million charge-recharge cycles have been achieved in the lab.  More importantly, the EESU could be sold at around $100 per kwh, making it several times cheaper than lithium ion batteries. Thus the EESU would be many times better than lithium-ion batteries in every conceivable way

Too good to be true?  A lot of supercapcitor scientists think so.

“The bottom line on EEStor’s ceramic capacitor energy storage claims is that they are extrapolating linear performance on a parameter (permittivity) that is not linear. I.e. the electric field collapses at high voltage/high electric field strength,” says Ted Bohn, ultracap expert at the Argonne National Lab. “Or in simpler terms, the capacitance of the device is not the same at 6 volts as it is at 6400 volts.”

If EEStor has achieved the breakthrough they claim it could prove extremely disruptive to the lithium ion battery industry rendering them immediately obsolete.  It would replace batteries for cell phones, electronics, military applications, and electric cars including the Volt.

I often mention EEStor to GM executives when I get the chance. I recently asked Volt vehicle line chief Tony Posawatz what he knows about EEStor.

“I have heard a little bit,” he said. “Certainly the press releases are interesting, it causes you to take note and follow it.”

“The guys involved in it certainly aren’t a fly by night operation,” he noted. “Still some of the claims, knowing what I know, are way out there.”

Asked if GM could quickly swap in EESUs if they became available in exchange for the lithium ion cells in future Volts, Posawatz agreed it was possible though added “it would take couple of years.”

Will the world see an EESU by then end of this year?  Only 17 days to find out.