Back in September, I got a series of emails from Rudyard Istvan of NanoCarbons LLC expressing a fair bit of frustration with the amount of attention this website provides to EEStor Inc., when in Istvan's opinion, it could be harnessed for more promising technologies. Yes, Rudyard Istvan is an EEStor skeptic and no, it's not the policy of this website to exclude the views of persons like Mr. Istvan from the overall discussion. I say this even in light of the fact that Mr. Istvan compared people like me to those of a cargo cult, a reference that made me break down and cry uncontrollably. Kidding. I've mentioned several times, the area of physics & material science that EEStor is operating in is not my area of expertise. I will back that up by saying further there may be no area where I have an area of expertise or better, if you know my area of expertise, please have it contact me.
In any case, I promised Mr. Istvan that I would give him the opportunity to discuss his views, but as sometimes happens, I dropped the ball. From his point of view, it probably seemed like this was intentional since more than one person hereupon thinks I'm a silly unreflective EEStor enthusiast and not much more. So in his latest round of emails Istvan really laid it on thick with references to...for example... Bertrand Russell, "Men would rather die than think. Most do" and some jabs related to religion vs science. Fair enough Mr. Istvan, it's always nice, as a poor judge of X to meet a quick judge of Y. Kidding.
So yes, EEStory fans, you'll have another set of skeptical views to dissect as you make up your minds about whether EEStor can meet it's 2 month window of time to deliver a prototype built on it's production line for Zenn's inspection.
And since I'm making up much of this as we go along, we've got a new format of presentation here which means to me, there will be yet another opportunity for people who disagree with me to discredit me. I'm talking about an mp3 of my conversation with Mr. Istvan. And yes, in advance, I can confirm that I sound fairly unsophisticated...a revelation of the simpleton I am I guess. But I'm ok with that because my purpose is simply to serve you the reader or in this case, listener so that you can feed you EEStor addiction. Of course, if this audio makes it extremely plain that I'm an idiot (based on reasoned feedback from you), it will absolutely be discontinued. Keep that in mind o ye of verbose opinion. :)
Finally, a disclaimer. This audio is part 1 of 2. Halfway through the interview, Mr. Istvan asked to speak with me on a topic "off the record." I have cut that section out. Don't ask me about it, don't even try to guess about it. Or if you must know, please ask Rudyard Istvan directly. Part 2 coming later.
Finally: I want to point out as you listen that we had a friendly conversation which contrasted with our emails back and forth. This is a lesson of human nature: it's much more difficult to be rude on a phone call than in a forum or chat room...and even harder when meeting someone in person. Actually, I'm never rude. Ever.
The Carl Watkins interview part 2 is on hold simply because I've been playing phone tag with him. Now that he's seen the feedback from part 1, I wanted to see if he had some thoughts about the feedback. He did...but to get it all, I still need to talk to him a bit further. In the meantime, see if you can connect anything Mr. Watkins has said with what Mr. Istvan has said. Any connections popping out at you???
UPDATE: the audio gets clipped at the end, as Mr. Istvan is in mid sentence. Here's the sentence in its entirety.
"I will just point out that it is almost the end of 2008 and they have yet to do permittivity testing on a real part."
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Part 2
For the second part of the interview, I've edited out the parts Mr. Istvan and I agreed were off the record. You'll notice this audio is also clipped at the end. What's clipped is what we referenced earlier and then pleasantries about Mr. Istvan providing the interview. Oh, he also said Y_PO is not a SME. Just kidding, he didn't say that.
I know less than 99% of the people about this topic so the only thing I didn't hear anything about is what Mr. Istvan's relationship is/was with Morton T. and what his opinion is about his creditability and BoD involvement is with EEStor? Is it covered in Part 2?
I hope that you can get some input back from him on how his visit with Kleiner Perkins in which he'll bring up EEStor went.
StephenB
Very interesting interview. Hearing the actual interview is great, and I'm sure the MP3 approach frees up your time from transcribing B.
So the innovation is in the pro-duct-ion liiine. Both in the methods and in the ability to produce on scale while hitting price targets. That is in agreement with what Watkins said and unfortunately discredits some of our resident SMEs.
As for Mr. Istvan's opinions.. He's clearly a very intelligent and has a wealth of knowledge in var0ious areas. (No disrespect toward him - I think we all appreciate his input.) However his points of objection are puzzling to me. If I'm understanding him correctly he's saying that the science behind Eestor's claims is quite possible aside from temperature, stress and cost problems.
- He projects what the price of a 31K component EESU would be based on the retail cost of available ultracaps. How does he know that Eestor doesn't have a manuf process that greatly reduces cost?
- He says the unit will crack because of the "vibrations" during change/discharge. How does he know Eestor doesn't have a new manuf process to correct for this?
- He says the performance Eestor claims is quite possible, but only at room temp. So he says that kills the EESU?!?! I'm only a software engineer, but seems to me they could figure out a way to heat/cool the thing as necessary.
Very strange. He's the most encouraging skeptic I've heard to date.
Thanks for adding the 2nd half of this.
I am glad he added that info about BMW and mild hybrid technologies. A very interesting line of interest for updating "normal" cars to increase general gas mileage.
One little quibble with one of the things he said about the Volts battery. The 5000 cycles refers to "deep cycles". Wear and tear on a battery goes up exponentially with depth of cycle. That's why they don't use the entire range of available charge on the battery. The 5000 cycle number is the worst case scenario under the worst case conditions. The way GM babies their battery, cycle life is less likely to be a problem than shelf life. Not only that but the battery is bigger than is required so that they can lose capacity and still deliver the advertised AER.
I don't agree with Rudyard that EEStor only said the lab equipment was certified to detect purity levels in the parts per billion and trillion in their July 29th 2008 press release.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-29-2008/0004857762&EDATE=
I read this as the production purity levels have been third party certified and according to Rudyard this would be an unheard of accomplishment.
Once again thanks B and also thanks to Rudyard Istvan for this great interview, much appreciated.
B, great interview I think you may have a future in radio
Now he (Rudyard) is really an SME, unlike many of the bozos on this blog, including myself ;-)
Listening to this interview made me realize just how complicated and hard it will be for eeStor to create a working production EESU. Unfortunately this probably means more delays.
He is not a physicist and says he cannot comment on fundamental physical limits (from his expertise). He highlights saturation as a killer problem but adds temp & piezo stress. And he thinks production is bound to cost too much.
This guy is not claiming to be competent to judge physical breakthroughs but nevertheless is confident based on his knowledge of current technology. It is fair enough - and I agree with him - but for surer reasons!
Hey B, great interview! You get 5 out of 5 stars. Keep up the good work. You will get to the bottom of EESTOR.
Well done B, a very unbiased interview. MP3 format is much better. The guy makes a lot of very valid points about the problem with the science/economics.
A few comments on Istvan's criticisms:
1. The peizoeletric effect is proportional to voltage. A small cap in a car could have large voltage swings. An Eestor battery would have almost constant voltage. In effect, the large capacitance of the battery damps voltage swings.
2. The WIPO patent measures permittivity of 19.8k at 85C and 3.5kV and 5kV. This clearly addresses the voltage saturation issue. As for the temperature coefficient, the tests were done at 85C, Not at room temperature of 20C as Istvan suggests. Was 85C chosen to show temperature independence?