30-plus minute interview with Dick Weir of EEStor
(NOTE: The video on Yahoo has been disabled, not surprisingly. But someone over at TheEEStory.com has kindly supplied a transcript.)
Mr. Weir probably had no clue the person interviewing him would post this on the Internet, but it appeared just a few hours ago. Weir talks about the history of EEStor, how he hooked up with Ian Clifford at ZENN Motors, the relationship with Lockheed, and the status of EEStor’s ultracapacitor development. Weir says there’s really nothing standing in the way now from commercial production, and that pre-production of EESU units will begin in the fourth quarter. This is a lengthy, very detailed phone interview, and I don’t believe Weir would be talking this way if he wasn’t confident in the road ahead. It sounds like, from the interview, that somebody is trying to profile EEStor and Weir — perhaps, maybe, for a documentary that’s being made?
(NOTE: I’ve spoken with Dick Weir several times by telephone. This is his voice in the interview, 100 per cent, for those who wonder if it’s some kind of impersonation hoax.)
A few nuggets:
* Says Kleiner Perkin’s owns “20-something per cent” of the company.
* Weir says he and his co-founders still own controlling interest in the company.
* On Lockheed: “I’m really in deep with Lockheed Martin.” He said Lockheed has no investment, but relationship goes way back.
* On EEStor’s value: “If we make an EESU… God only knows what we’ll be valued then.”
* He has two patents on grid-load levelling. “You can put 45 per cent more electricity on the grid and do nothing more than put our batteries on there…. that electricity could supply the electricity to the electric vehicle market as it emerges… we make wind and solar real… you can make a wind farm operate like a coal-fired plant and it’s really cost-effective.”
* On storage for PCs and handhelds. “We can take a battery for a cellphone and give you three to five times more energy storage that would never degrade on you and you can charge in seconds.”
* Electric vehicles: “It’s going to take time to emerge, but I think with ZENN Motors it’s going to be very interesting to see them grow dramatically to capture that market.”
* On portable tools: “I’m already in knee-deep with the people in the portable tool business. They’re waiting for me to emerge and they’ll come on strong.”
* On relationship with ZENN and the EESU: “They buy it for a certain amount and they put it in their car. Right now our contract says $100 per kilowatt-hour, excluding electronics, and it’s extremely attractive. You take a lithium-ion battery right now it’s $350 to $1,200 dollars… nobody is going to compete with us, certainly no lithium-ion.”
* How quick to market for EESU electric car? “Need is always a wonderful thing, and the need is very high for our technology…. there’s nothing corrosive, harmful or explosive in our technology… there’s nothing, there’s no chemistry part of our product. It’s all solid state… I think also ZENN is going to happen very, very quickly… people will want that electric car. They’ll be able to test it, don’t get me wrong, but they’ll be able to pass those tests quickly because we’ve got the UL.”
* On EESU status: “I’m already out there putting EESUs together and I’m still in June. I’m ahead of schedule.” Says ZENN will get pre-production prototypes by the end of this year. “Once I do that, all hell is going to break loose for ZENN as well as EEStor.”
* Ending note: “We’ve done our homework, and you’ll see the results when we get into 2010… you’ll see a very effective and constant ramp-up to our production capabilities.”
I can guarantee one thing: this audio/video will spread like wildfire across the Internet over the next few days.
Tyler Hamilton is associate publisher and editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and former business columnist for the Toronto Star. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005.
July 21st, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Honestly, this interview drops my confidence…significantly. The basic errors in science that he makes are jaw dropping. Na and K as contaminants for voltage breakdown because of how they work in a solution? Alumina as the highest resistivity material in the world? 1100 V/um for alumina – by it self, sure. Not for 3500V across the 0.3um of the coated material. “The most thing you hear about…these bloggers…is voltage. I just showed you where…you know…it sounds like they don’t read. So the purity and the fact that I have test data (that) showed it…and also the polarization. So I think that overcomes it.” Well, Mr. Weir, no, no it doesn’t. Not even close. On THEEESTORY, an interview with one Dr. Cross has a quote that their claims are “outrageous”. Of course, he also claims that they are scientists, so I’m not sure how much faith I have in Dr. Cross, either.
July 21st, 2009 at 11:39 pm
The hype/BS continues from Dick Weir.
Nothing has changed since Wed, 05 May 2004:
http://www.ufto.com/clients-only/uftonotes04.html
“A number of major companies have said they would issue a purchase order quickly if specs are met.
The company is currently seeking equity investment of $3.5 million. A business plan is available.
Contact Richard D. Weir, President and CEO
EEStor, Inc. Cedar Park, TX
512-258-5669 dick_weir@eestor.us“
July 22nd, 2009 at 9:59 am
The two most interesting detail here are 2010 (when he’s saying prototypes will be delivered), and $100/kWh. At $100/kWh, you can buy a battery (using the term loosely) that provides a Civic/Corolla size vehicle 160 miles/charge for $4,000. If this works out, including scaling up to high production volumes (which is a huge “if”, admittedly), it would be hard to overestimate the impact it could have on our energy and climate situations.
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
OMG!!!!
This is incredible. I have shivers just reading your highlights. I will definitely remember this day for the rest of my life. I think I will call it: Electro-Day, when the wild power of electricity was tamed.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:54 am
I can guarantee one thing: this audio/video will spread like wildfire across the Internet over the next few
So where is it???sday”
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:06 am
It’s around, but I agree, hasn’t been picked up as much as I thought — likely because you have to invest 38 minutes of your time to listen.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:41 am
The interview on yahoo.com has been removed.
Audio interview available @
http://www.4all.com/uploads/DW_Confcall_jun2009.mp3
(18 meg) best way to download, right click select “Save As”.
THANK YOU Smackyyz!
July 24th, 2009 at 6:04 am
[...] until more talks, etc. This time we hear a little from EEStor CEO Dick Weir in this video on CleanBreak. The take away? Weir sounds confident the manufacturing will begin fourth quarter this year, [...]
July 24th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Wow- extremely interesting interview. I have always been optimistic about EEStor, so the contents of this interview did not really surprise me. Still, until they actually deliver, I would continue to consider this a high-risk, high-reward type of investment. That said, I wish I has a spare million to risk;-)
July 25th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
[...] Clean Break » Blog Archive » 30-plus minute interview with Dick Weir of EEStor [...]
July 28th, 2009 at 8:01 am
[...] Stealthy energy storage maker EEStor continues to make headlines despite the fact that the company has yet to deliver its device that has such revolutionary claims. But the latest news comes via an audio interview that was conducted by an unknown interviewer with EEStor’s CEO Dick Weir that has now made its way as a transcript onto TheEEStory.com. Now normally we wouldn’t pay too much attention to a story of such unclear origin, but Clean Break’s Tyler Hamilton, who’s interviewed Weir before and knows his voice, says that the audio clip is Weir’s voice “100 per cent.” [...]
July 28th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
It all sounds just a bit too good to be true. Watch your money investors.
July 29th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Whatever!
I’m so sick of this.
Weir, CRAP OR GET OFF THE POT!
July 29th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
[...] a somewhat suspect interview that was posted to the web and then subsequently removed (but not before being turned into a transcript), Dick Weir — the clandestine CEO of the even more [...]
July 30th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
[...] a somewhat suspect interview that was posted to the web and then subsequently removed (but not before being turned into a transcript), Dick Weir — the clandestine CEO of the even more [...]
July 30th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
[...] a somewhat suspect interview that was posted to the web and then subsequently removed (but not before being turned into a transcript), Dick Weir — the clandestine CEO of the even more [...]
August 11th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
To correct the uninformed – this was not an interview as much as it was part of the ZENN shelf offering – and investors rightly wanted to know more about how the money would be used (increasing the ZENN stake in Eestor), hence the discussion with Weir.
I see the same “haters” posting on nearly every article about these guys. We’ll know soon enough if it works as advertised – disruptive technology is rare so skepticism is the norm, but I’m pulling for them.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:04 am
[...] storage to come up to speed with EEStor. This is a link to a transcript of Mr Weir, of EEStor and Tyler Hamilton, senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star. Significantly, at 14:04 where Weir [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 12:36 am
[...] storage to come up to speed with EEStor. This is a link to a transcript of Mr Weir, of EEStor and Tyler Hamilton, senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star. Significantly, at 14:04 where Weir [...]
January 10th, 2010 at 9:56 am
Does anyone have an update on how the big unveiling of EEStor’s battery by Dick Weir went in 2009? I am surprised it wasn’t all over the national news.
January 29th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
How convenient is it that the info leaked by the “CEO” of a company will increase his company’s value tremendously. Why is it that the exec’s never leak info that will decrease their comanpany’s value.
March 17th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Nothing will increase the value of EEstor, the company, unless and until they have shares to buy…which won’t likely happen until they have sample products.
The only news in the last 6 months that maybe gives an inkling of a timeline for products is the Underwriters Laboratories’ confirmation that they’ve received a request to test from EEstor in September 2009. We don’t know if they’ve received a product sample to test, though. If they did receive a sample, the testing would probably take 6+ months. That would put us with a new window for new news of April 2010 or later. Make of that what you will.