Despite their expansive rhetoric, and ambiguities, any SME will appreciate there are many show stoppers in the EEStor approach. The main ones I see:

1. “We can take over the Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor market”. Not even remotely possible. AEC’s are cheap. BKK gushed about how LED lamps had AEC’s as a limiting factor in their life. He then produced some machined cylinders that supposedly represented the size savings. 

Not so fast, BKK. The main AEC in the LED lamp is 10 UF @200 volts.  Anyone can go on Digikey.com, and see the cost of that, at retail, is 50 cents. Now, that value in an MLC is over the standard range, and will set you back over 100 dollars! EEStors glass-cmbt, or just CMBT have to be made into an MLC to get there. It should not take a rocket scientist to appreciate that making an MLC using EEStor powder is NOT going to be cheaper, it will be more expensive because of the aqueous processing and the silane coating. 

But appreciate the moving hand; barium is cheaper than aluminum, so our MLC will be cheaper than an AEC. As I said before, just because iron is cheaper than rubber, does not mean a locomotive will cost less than a car. They must think stockholders are dumb.

As Zogbi said, the three main issues are cost, cost, & cost! 

2. EEStore has ignored the inevitable “Catch 22”. In the unlikely instance of a top-tier capacitor manufacturer, on the basis of 3 samples, decides to take the next step, it will take about 64 samples to run through the acceptance testing, and the, a few Kg of CMBT for the company to make prototype MLC’s. Putting a new powder into a latex paint like suspension takes a lot of characterizing. Surface chemistry and properties, morphology, surface area, presence of contaminants, like silica, XRD, SEM, and trials with different surfactants and dispersants.

At a capacity of 125 grams a day, we are looking at months for EEStor to accumulate them, assuming this potential licencees has the patience, and allows such a mixed batch.

So, increase their capacity! Is the inevitable response. Who pays the several million to do that?

3. EEStor does not have the capacitor skills in house. someone will counter, “They have Ulrich!”

‘They have Weir”, “They have so-and-so”...No, they do not have anyone in there hour by hour, day after day, that can guide the huge amount of development yet to be done, or to talk intelligently with the SME’s from target companies.

And, of course, there are the other issues: IC said the cap companies that got samples, said we don’t want Capacitors, we want high ED. (They conveniently forgot that objective, didn’t they?) They have no reliability data (HALT does not count until you pin down the acceleration modes). believe it or not, they have little credibility in the industry.