Disruptor Video: ZENN Motors' Electric Car

CNN.com has posted this video interview with Zenn Motors CEO Ian Clifford about the potential disruption of the auto industry. It was recorded at the Business 2.0 magazine roundtable on disruption in San Francisco.

Zenn, formerly Feel Good Cars, has begun shipping its new electric car which uses conventional lead acid batteries (full specs).

More importantly, Zenn has exclusive rights to a new, potentially disruptive power technology. Zenn is working on a next-gen car that uses EEStor's ultracapacitor to achieve dramatic capabilities, including:

• five-minute charge time
• 250-300 mile range
• battery cost of 1/3 to 1/10th that of lithium ion batteries
• eight times the power of lead acid batteries

I spoke with Ian as well as a ZENN car dealer in California while at the Business 2.0 rountable. Ian says everything is on track. The car dealer says he has pent-up demand and is eager to take on the new ZENN cars, which despite the low sticker price are potentially more profitable to dealers than conventional cars.

CNN Video: Car of the Future

**Other Sources **

Financial Post: Zenn E-Car's disruptive approach (pdf)

Archive of On Disruption columns from The Financial Post.

The Energy Blog looks at EEStor's abilities and a recent delay.

Reporter Tyler Hamilton says there is industry scepticism on EEStor, including researchers who think EEStor is pursuing the impossible.

Take a look at this comment from an anonymous scientist posted at OnDisruption who questions the seriousness and validity of EEStor's work, including U.S. patents applied for in 2001 and a world patent filed by inventors Richard Weir and Carl Nelson of EEStor in Aug. 2005. The more recent filing refers to a loaded plastic film-like material in contrast to the earlier document which referred to a solid ceramic dielectric. The surprising part to the scientific community is that embedded capacitors (at least so far) have never been able to generate anywhere near the power or capacitance (K factor) that EEStor is claiming.

Arthur Chait, CEO of EoPlex, a company with a disruptive approach to small fuel cells and batteries used in emergency radio systems, was also featured in Business 2.0's NextNet blog and on CNN.com video.

Comments

[Car Dealer Finder]

I have found that Electro cars are not coming that strong of which they should come. They are still a unconventionl group of cars in the market

[Tony]

I've been looking into the agreement between ZENN and EEstor, and noticed the shares in ZENN made a huge jump. Does anybody know when the testing of the ultracapacitors begins and when they will be installed in to the ZENN cars?

[Jim Johnson]

I noticed on ultracapacitors.org where some scientist refuted the claims of EESTOR's batter technoloyg for ZENN. They said in the patent is a miscalculation that lead them to believe that could develop the technology they think they have.

(http://www.ultracapacitors.org/ultracapacitors.org-blog/zenn-eestor-what-has-happened-2.htm)

I sure hope that EESTOR pans out and really has what they say they have.

JJ