Chevy Volt needs an EEStor jolt

Hello, Chevy Volt! Yep, this is GM's offering to eco cadres of the world: a plug-in electric car with a three-cylinder gasoline engine that's not really an engine -- it's a generator to power the electric motor when it runs out of wall-socket juice. Kind of ironic since GM was accused of killing the electric car in the first place, but hey, it's a step in the right direction.

So it's not the most aesthetically pleasing car in the world. Some have suggested that they made it look mean so it wouldn't be associated with cutesy-wutesy bunny loving environmentalists. The fact is this car is just a prototype and won't be on the road for at least three years. The reason? The lithium-ion batteries around today just aren't good enough.

But is that really so? When I interviewed Eco Auto owner Ron Gompertz (see Smart Car article below), he tipped me off to EEStor, a company that patented a battery that's strong enough to power an SUV and can be charged in minutes rather than hours.

The company is contracted with a Canadian electric car company called Feel Good Cars (or Zenn Cars, at zenncars.com), which makes the golf-cart-like Zenn car (I drove one for the article; it's slow and tiny and if you turn on the heat the battery drains). But supposedly much grander things are in the works.

I tried doing a little research, but it wasn't easy because EEStor keeps a very low profile; they don't even have a website. But I did find out a few things.

From Business Week Online:

According to a May, 2004 edition of Utility Federal Technology Opportunities, an obscure trade newsletter, EEStor claims to make a battery at half the cost per kilowatt-hour and one-tenth the weight of lead-acid batteries. Specifically, the product weighs 400 pounds and delivers 52 kilowatt-hours. (For battery geeks: "The technology is basically a parallel plate capacitor with barium titanate as the dielectric," UFTO says.) No hazardous or dangerous materials are used in manufacturing the ceramic-based unit, which means it qualifies as what Silicon Valley types call "cleantech.

From Clean Break:

On top of this release, a reliable source familiar with EEStor had this to say about the company's technology:

* The batteries fully charge in minutes as opposed to hours.
* Whereas with lead acid batteries you might get lucky to have 500 to 700 recharge cycles, the EEStor technology has been tested up to a million cycles with no material degradation.
* EEStor's technology could be used in more than low-speed electric vehicles. The company envisions using it for full-speed pure electric vehicles, hybrid-electrics (including plug-ins), military applications, backup power and even large-scale utility storage for intermittent renewable power sources such as wind and solar.
* Because it's a solid state battery rather than a chemical battery, such being the case for lithium ion technology, there would be no overheating and thus safety concerns with using it in a vehicle.
* Finally, with volume manufacturing it's expected to be cost-competitive with lead-acid technology.

"It's the holy grail of battery technology," said my source. "It means you could do a highway-capable electric city car that would recharge in three or four minutes and drive you from Toronto to Montreal. Consumers wouldn't notice the difference from driving an electric car versus a gas-powered car."

Too good to be true? Who knows? I keep wanting GM to hook up with these folks and go, "Look! Look! There really is a battery good enough!"

If you know anyone who works for GM, please let them know.