Zenn motor company proposes on it’s website a car that should change the world as we know it completely. This is the exact text of their proposal:
[B]CityZENN
The CityZENN is planned to be a fully certified, highway capable vehicle with a topspeed of 125 KPH/ 80 MPH and A RANGE OF 400 KILOMETERS/250 MILES. Powered by EEStor the CityZENN will be rechargable in less than 5 minutes, feature operating costs 1/10th of a typical internal combustion engine vehicle and be 100% emission free! The zero-emission no- noice CityZENN will be designed to meet the transportation requirements of a large percentage of drivers worldwide.
Target launch of the CityZENN powered by EEStor: fall 2009
[/B]
Wow, now that’s something isn’t it? All the advantages of an EV without any of the typical drawbacks like limited range and long recharging times. This car would sledge driving costs with zero-emission free into the bargain! It’s inconceivable that every other car maker on the planet would not shift to this concept as fast as they could, once it’s out there. They just wouldn’t be competitive any more if they didn’t and ICE cars would probably pretty soon be outlawed anyway if such a good alternative were available. No more need for oil, no more global instability due to nations trying to secure their oil supply, no more excessive spending on energy costs, no more blackmailing and terror sponsoring by oil producing nations. World peace at last!
If it sounds to good to be true it generally is of course. I can spot a few problems straight away. The whole proposal hinges of course on the EEStor supercap technology. Remember this is a capacitor based storage device for electricity with over double the storage capacity per weight unit as LI-ION at a fraction of the costs, and a very short recharge time. Let’s assume this technology is actually feasible, is it reasonable to expect it to be allowed to totally change auto mobility as we know it within two years? ZENN seems to base it’s confidence of actually receiving these units by 2009 on a 3.8% share it has procured in EEStor. However I notice that EEStor has attracted attention from a much more sinister source too. This is Lockheed Martin, and yes this is that dinosaur of the military industrial complex that has a vested interest in a world that is destabilized by the struggle of procuring commodities like oil in order to shift it’s high-tech military hardware. They could probably use the technology for some kind of weapon that requires massive discharges of electrical energy, but they wouldn’t be able to sell it if world peace broke out would they?
Anyway they are only one of many companies in industry and finance that could really do without a revolutionary shift towards non crude based transportation. It’s fair to assume that these interests are doing whatever is in their enormous financial and political power to stall any new technology like ultracapacitors to hit the market. After initially announcing expectation of receiving these capacitors in 2007 ZENN is now talking about 2009. Well I’ll bet you anything that ZENN won’t have any miracle cars on offer by then. They don’t even have a picture of this “CityZENN”available to show the public yet that I’m aware off. What they did achieve however was a 20% increase in share value upon announcing this car alone.
This reminds me ominously of the ZAP strategy of saturating the market with press releases about miracle EV’s that never materialize, in order to boost the value of the board of directors stock options (see my posting under the ZAP-X thread). But in all fairness I have no indication of foul play, only of naivety. Of course I would be more than happy to be proven wrong here, so if anybody has concrete info about a car like this really hitting the market any time soon, please share! And monitor the ZENN motor company closely, if only as an educational case of strategies of stalling and pre-empting new technology by the oilindustry, car manufacturers and whoever else thinks it’s in his interests to keep the old system going.
Well, I am backing Zenn with my good wishes. If they can pull this off while keeping it affordable, the cityZENN will revolutionize the automobile industry. Go Zenn !!
If only that were the case. The thing to think about is, all the countries that have oil are generally pretty poor because that is the only thing that they have going for them. If we stop buying that, they will only sink down even further leading to more corruption and more terror. But I do love the thought of this car. Not because I want to buy a Zenn car, but because it will create competition with other makers so that I can buy a car with similar specs to the zenn car from a great manufacturer. From one of the great german or japanese companies.
Imagine how quite New york city would be if all the taxis had to be electric! (and If they had Zenn remove the horns :D)
[QUOTE=Lectrol;2332]If only that were the case. The thing to think about is, all the countries that have oil are generally pretty poor because that is the only thing that they have going for them. If we stop buying that, they will only sink down even further leading to more corruption and more terror. But I do love the thought of this car. Not because I want to buy a Zenn car, but because it will create competition with other makers so that I can buy a car with similar specs to the zenn car from a great manufacturer. From one of the great german or japanese companies.
Imagine how quite New york city would be if all the taxis had to be electric! (and If they had Zenn remove the horns :D)
Yay for progress!! Still no EEstor webpage tho :([/QUOTE]
most of the time its not the country its self but one business man that’s making a lot of money… (ie: Russia, Venezuela, small countries in the middle east, ect.) those contries ARE poor even though they have a VERY valuable comidity, if we dont buy oil from those countries they will sell it to other poor contries instead… its better that we in the US are independant from the rest of the world like we were from the 1900’s till about 1990’s now that everything is produced over seas (because its cheaper to build) we produce NOTHING and have no back bone as a country. in other words… we are the ones that are starting to suffer because of it.
I say we cant build these cars fast enough (assuming we keep them in north america for production and what not) and try to restrict as much of the technology from leaving as possible. let the other countries work things out on how to do something them selfs for at least 5-10 years.
[QUOTE=Lectrol;2332]If only that were the case. (relating to my world peace comment)
Okay I realise of course that the market introduction of zero drawbacks EV’s wouldn’t actually cause a sudden outbreak of world peace. It would help though since most conflicts these days are petro dollar funded or oil dependency related. My point was that if EV’s with specs like ZENN proposes became available it really would have a profound impact on the existing global economic and political balance of power. Hundreds of Billions of dollars worth of unproduced oil would loose most of it’s present market value in case of a “premature” shift to non oil based transportation. Oil producing countries would loose their political leverage on the western countries to wards which they generally have a hostile attitude. The stakes here are absolutely enormous. ZENN is blundering into something that is so much bigger than they bargain for. This is something that could have an enormous impact on everybody’s life and it is clear to me that very few people are aware of this. The small number of people taking an interest in forums like this is prove of that. Amazing really.
Most technological breakthroughs in every field come from military application. Th eneed to log petroleum products everywhere would limit military personnel so a fairly lightweight capacitor would be ideal and appeal to the military and Lockheadd-martin.
As a chemist, my big problem is cost. I am sure the guys working on these units are solid-state chemists and physicists. So they want to get paid well for their experience and knowledge. SO these may not be horribly affordable. I saw on wikipedia (not the most reliable source) that these things production cost alone is over $3000.
ZENN is a small time operation that depends heavily on one asset: it’s (small) share in EEStor, and the exclusive right to use it’s technology in vehicles under 1400 kilos. I found a guy with some pretty well informed opinions on the ZENN/EEStor saga that are well worth reading for vaporware watchers on the flytheroad.com site of Venture Vehicles. Check it out here, and look for the comments of “rosesj”:
