[liammcglynn]

According to a recent article, http://www.reuters.com/article/earth2Tech/idUS374977681620090923, Zenn has decided to stop making cars. Instead, it will focus on marketing its ZENNergy drive system to other auto manufacturers. Kudos to those on this forum (Mos) that foresaw this move.

As Mos insisted, Zenn will make much more money selling the drive system than the car.

This has interesting implications for the EEStor technology though. With their ultracapacitor (small prototype) undergoing UL testing and Zenn announcing a major production shift, we could be tempted to conclude that the elusive EEStor unit is REAL!

Zenn's announcement may also mean that there will be a delay in production automobiles with the ZENNergy drive system. Will Zenn actually be a roadblock to wider adoption? Will one or more major auto companies jump at the ZENNergy drive system? Is EEStor contractually obligated to use Zenn as a middle man? How easily can the EEStor technology be adapted to other applications (laptop batteries, Copper Tops, UPS, Off-peak grid storage, etc.)?

[Plantagenet]

From the Reuter's article: "Young electric vehicle makers need hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to build factories and mass produce EVs. Electric vehicle startups Tesla and Fisker had to turn to the Department of Energy for loans for their factory funds. But on the other hand, Zenn’s future is now even more tied to the success or failure of EEStor, which given EEStor’s secrecy and missed deadlines, is a risky play."


Al Gore supports the Finnish company "Fiskers" and their electric car built in Finland, so the 500 million dollars Gore got from the US government will be spent in Finland on Finnish workers who will be building the Finnish Fiskers car.

I'm not sure why the US government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a Finnish car company that Al Gore is the part owner of, but this means that other electric car companies like Zenn that didn't get Gore's blessing and the boatloads of US government money that came with it are out of luck----they can't afford to go into production and can't compete with Gore's Finnish car company---as a result Zenn isn't even going to try to build an electric car.

[topgear]

I guess someone should tell Zenn that they are no longer selling cars because they are still advertising them on their website along with where to find a dealer to find their vehicles.

[Revi]

That is a bummer, in my opinion. Zenn made the best low speed vehicle on the market, and now is out of the NEV business.

I see NEV's as the future. The traditional car is going to go the way of the dinosaur in my humble opinion.

A NEV with the eestor technology would be an amazing thing.

Maybe GEM will make something. They already have the Peapod.

[mos6507]

I heard that Zenn only sold something in the hundreds worth of cars. So if it was the best NEV, that doesn't speak well to the size of the NEV market. They would be out of business long ago if they had not been attached to EESTOR.

[mos6507]

pstarr, you don't get it. It's a technological/cost problem. Not suburbia. Most people's commute YES FROM THE SUBURBS is within range of plugin hybrids like the Volt. You always have to look for some way to throw in some kind of social critique, even when it's not appropriate. Sheesh.

[Revi]

There will be a useable electric vehicle coming along soon. Nissan has one, GEM has a great NEV, the Volt is a possibility and Ford has an electric Focus next year.

They have to sell all the crap they have on the lot first.

It's your patriotic duty to buy a Tahoe.

Then we'll move on.

[mos6507]

That is where we differ. You are linear and I am wholistic. I understand people, ecologies, systems, etc. You see fixes and I see solutions in isolation. I understand patterns and you see "opportunities."

Arrogance, much?

All these cute little electric cars are not going to get people through snow storms and emergency trips to the hospital.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

I mean, I still believe in a die-off and therefore I believe that all this stuff has a point of diminishing returns. Does that mean I'm going to F.U.D. over every move we make because it's not a panacea? No.

With anything that people buy, it has to meet consumer demands. If it's good for GW and PO, all the better. But what you see here are people making prescriptions for society.

Buy a bike! Carpool! Move to an apartment a block away from your job! Certainly these are more "sustainable" measures than merely swapping out gas cars for EVs. But guess what, people won't do that until they have no other option!

So since we still live in a capitalistic society and "progress" happens due to market forces, then peakers are going to have to give up their ideals for change and realize that an attempt to technofix will proceed first. It will proceed, have temporary and/or partial success on the downslope, and then we'll all be forced to transition, stair-step, down to the next level down. That's the way it works. We're not going to go from Hummer back to Horse in one fell swoop.

nothing has changed those EVs. Not supercapacitors, lithium batteries, nothing. They don't work

The opportunity for them to proceed is narrow, narrower than cornies like YesPlease thinks, but it does exist.

[rdsaltpower]

Good call Mos on Zenn. I sighned up on their email bout 18 months ago and recieved regular updates. But have not recieved anything in months now.