This article was originally published on January 17, 2019. The ad is still in heavy circulation, and we are still getting a lot of questions about it, so we’re re-posting our commentary here. The ad is still dated December 2018, and what follows has also not been updated or revised (if you wish to continue your research, the price of the primary stock discussed, Ilika, is now much higher than it was two years ago, there has been other news in battery tech, particularly with Quantumscape, which has now gone public through a SPAC at ticker QS… and Tesla itself is in a far different place as well than it was a couple years ago). We have also left the original comments appended to this article, they include some great feedback and questions and suggestions about a few other stocks in the sector.
From 1/1/19:
“Forever battery,” “Jesus battery,” the “holy grail” of energy storage… those are all terms we’ve heard thrown around before, and in this instance they’re used by Matt McCall in service of his new pitch for his Investment Opportunities newsletter ($49/year for the “basic” version).
And like other advances in batteries, of course, he thinks there’s a way to get rich from it. McCall calls it the “Quantum Glass Battery” and says that all the big energy and tech companies are getting on board, as is the inventor of the lithium-ion battery (John Goodenough).
So will this latest battery be what “sets us free from the scourge of fossil fuels?” That’s a lovely thing to hope for, of course, and it will probably take some breakthroughs in energy storage to make renewable energy a much larger part of our energy supply (since, of course, the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine, and battery charging is nowhere near fast enough to replace gasoline refueling right now at scale), but let’s see if we can ID the stock he’s talking about, then we can try to separate the stock from the hype and see if it appeals.
Ready?
The first part of the ad is all about safety — demonstrating with some videos the flammable nature of the lithium-ion battery cells, particularly when they get pierced, and then showing a video to demonstrate that this prototype “Holy Grail” battery can take three gunshots and still keep charging your phone.
And he lays it on thick, as ad copywriters always do:
“I call it the Quantum Glass Battery.
“But, as amazing as this is, this is NOT what makes this new type of battery so awe-inspiring.
“This short demonstration offers just a TINY TASTE of something much more revolutionary…
“An evolutionary leap in technology so profound — so transformative — it will likely change everything about your life — from how you get around, to how you communicate with others, even the way you think about the world….
“‘The battery of the future.’ —
Popular Mechanics“
He says that this new “Quantum Glass Battery” will also provide “lightning-quick charging”… with a charge that can also last for weeks, not hours, and a much longer lifecycle (over 100,000 recharge “cycles” without degrading, compared to a few hundred for current batteries).
So that pretty much takes care of all current complaints about batteries. As long as it’s fairly light, seems like we’re pretty much guaranteed to all be using this new battery in a matter of weeks, no?
Well, these things take time to go from the lab to the real world. Lots of time. And companies in the past have tended to roll out new battery technologies and chemistries veeerrrryyyy slooooowwwwlllyy… largely because the technology just isn’t ready for commercialization, both because the materials science takes a while to make progress and because of the massive investment required to create new battery manufacturing capacity (and, of course, a new technology is always a risk — particularly when the old one is also still improving nicely each year and is cheap and familiar). The world always moves a lot slower than the marketers would like.
But still, we want to know what company or technology he’s talking about.
And he says it’s already in the works…
“All 5 of the biggest lithium-ion battery makers on the planet are now shifting their focus to this technology…
“Everything you own that requires a battery is about to undergo a major overhaul — digital cameras, flashlights, portable chargers, remote controls, power tools, coffee bean grinders, Bluetooth headsets, GPS devices, blood glucose monitors, pacemakers, electric razors, wristwatches… the list goes on and on…
“As Wired magazine says, “This is the battery breakthrough that could change everything.”
Are you getting our free Daily Update
"reveal" emails? If not,
just click here...
Wait, if all the big players are already switching to this technology… how is it that we’re supposed to get rich? Does he want us to buy Panasonic or something? (Probably not, but, for what it’s worth, that was one of the stocks pitched during the initial Tesla Gigafactory craze, back in 2014… with not much to show for it four years later and the stock down some 20%, despite the fact that the Gigafactory did open and they’re selling a heckuva lot of Tesla batteries…. be wary of huge companies that are teased as beneficiaries of breakthrough new technologies, it takes a lot of peanuts to feed an elephant.)
So we can probably stipulate that those big guys are all “investing in” this technology, not “switching” to it… can we please get some actual clues?
“NOWHERE will the coming ‘Quantum Glass’ Battery revolution have a more profound — more truly far-reaching — impact than in the worldwide multi-trillion-dollar automotive industry…
“Where just about every major car manufacturer is chomping at the bit to get this type of battery inside their fleet of vehicles…
“In short: This technology is going to finally thrust electric and autonomous vehicles from a fledgling industry…
“Into a mainstream $3 TRILLION global juggernaut…”
OK, so it’s electric car applications that excite him. What else?
“Already companies have begun ripping out outdated lithium-ion battery technology in today’s electric and driverless vehicles and are replacing it with the ground-breaking new “Quantum Glass” Battery technology…
“And the results are nothing short of earth-shattering…
“According to automotive industry insiders, one creation using the “Quantum Glass” Battery technology can fully charge an electric car in as little as 60 seconds.”
The technology is always changing, but that sounds a bit more extreme than the reality — they may be “ripping it out” in the lab, but not in production, nobody is using a solid state battery in a car just yet… though Henrik Fisker keeps claiming he’s already got one ready that he’ll show you… later. The auto industry is as full of hopeful showmen as the newsletter industry, so we should probably change that to “can theoretically fully charge an electric car in as little as 60 seconds… as long as the battery turns out to be commercially viable and safe and fits in the design and someone actually starts producing it.”
What else?
“The largest auto parts suppliers in the world — Bosch and Continental — are now backing the technology behind the ‘Quantum Glass’ Battery.
“Caterpillar, the world’s leading construction equipment company, is aiming to adopt the technology too, for its trucks, diggers, and excavation equipment.
“The world’s biggest manufacturer of spark plugs for gasoline engines is restructuring its entire business to take part in the ‘Quantum Glass’
Battery revolution!”
OK, so what we’re obviously talking about here is solid state batteries, the replacement of a liquid electrolyte in the lithium ion battery with a solid of some kind, which makes different form factors possible and cuts down on the risk of a runaway reaction or a fire if the battery is pierced. And those big companies are all working with solid state battery technology to try to see if it will work… so I guess they’re technically all “backing” this technology, but they’re all trying different techniques and materials and partnering with different R&D labs.
As with many such pitches, this one seamlessly goes from “this technology will revolutionize the world,” which may well be true if it can be commercialized, to “this one little company is destined to dominate it all,” which almost never turns out to be the case with new technologies.
But anyway, a few more clues and a touch more hype:
“I have no doubt this will be the biggest story in the automotive world over the next several years.
“Right now, you can get in before the investing mainstream even catches a whiff of these developments.”
And he alludes to the huge billionaire investing fund that Bill Gates has spearheaded, with the backing of Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson and lots of other high-profile folks — that’s real, it’s called Breakthrough Energy Ventures and it is intended to “commercialize energy innovation at scale,” though it’s only a couple years old at this point and it’s certainly not taking any companies public anytime soon (they do have some interesting sounding investments in batteries and grid storage, including solid state batteries, but these investors are not pushing for quick returns, they’re pushing to change the world a decade from now).
And then, of course, we get to the “one tiny company” argument that is so often at the heart of a stock pitch for a new technology:
“You see, the real story — and the story few people outside a small circle of high-level scientists, engineers and in-the-know insiders know about— is the tiny company at the epicenter of this groundbreaking technology…
“This firm — which is off the radar of 99% of the investing public — has secured the key patents to the technology behind the production of the ‘Quantum Glass’ Battery.”
How does it feel, being just $49 away from owning the patents on the energy storage technology that will dominate the world for the next 20 years? Yeah, you’re probably not — sorry. That’s not the way things work.
But we will endeavor to find the name for free, so that way you don’t need to be disappointed that the hype inspired you to believe something that’s floating 1,000 feet above reality.
And the hype continues, making us practically drool in anticipation:
“A chance to learn how to get in on the ground floor of the tiny firm that’s paving the way for the global $3 TRILLION electric car revolution.
“While it’s still trading for peanuts…
“While NO ONE else knows about it…
“This is like being the first to know about a little-known $1 stock called Netflix in 2003 that would go on to disrupt the entire $496 BILLION entertainment market…”
Don’t worry, it’s not just the next Netflix, it’s the next Microsoft and Amazon, too, poised to dominate pretty much every fun market in the world (Smartphones! Laptops! Internet of Things! Cars!)
OK, get your heart rate back down. What’s the actual company?
“One tiny company—less than 1/1,000 the size of General Motors—who owns the critical patents to the Quantum Glass Battery….
“… patents have already been granted and approved in SIX major automotive markets across the globe, including—
* The United States
* Europe
* China
* Japan
* Canada
* Great Britain”
OK… so some patents around the world, market cap under $50 million or so. Other clues?
“… one of the biggest car companies in the world — a $198 BILLION multi-national behemoth — has sought this tiny firm out.
“This auto giant produces 10 million cars a year and commands a leading 9.2% of the global car market.
“They’ve forged an historic partnership deal with this tiny firm to fast track the production of the technology behind the Quantum Glass Battery… to get it into their cars and bring it into the global mainstream.”
OK, so that’s Toyota… no one else is very close to that big these days. And yes, Toyota and other Japanese automakers are trying to “catch up” in electric vehicles with a partnership to “fast track the development of solid state batteries” … but that’s a team-up of giants, no microcaps need apply (Panasonic and GS Yuasa on the battery side, Toyota, Nissan and Honda on the auto side). Toyota is working with lots of battery researchers and battery companies to test products as well, of course… though it’s also worth pointing out that when they say “fast track” they mean they’d like to have solid-state batteries in cars by 2022 or 2023, with lots of folks, including some folks at Toyota, saying that 2030 is more likely for commercial-scale production.
“Another is the 4th largest auto company in the world who produces more than 5 million cars per years… 20 million motorcycles… 6 million power products.”
So that’s Honda, which, as you might imagine, is also working with lots of different battery partners and consortia.
And we’re told that “production is nearing the critical pilot stages.”
Which presumably means the pilot stage for new production lines for batteries, not actual cars that use the batteries.
Then the spitballing about the effervescent future:
“Let’s say this company’s battery captures just one half of ONE PERCENT of the global electric car market in the coming years…
“That will be enough to boost its revenues to more than $2 BILLION when production and sales are in full swing…
“That’s an incredible 27,746% increase from where it stands today.”
What does that mean? Well, the one half of one percent thing is just a made up number, meant to make you think it’s conservative… but as a clue, it means the current level is somewhere in the single millions – roughly $5-10 million.
And, for a final clue…
“This stock does not trade on a conventional U.S. exchange. In short, the opportunity before you right now is the same kind of potential you’d see in an early-stage, venture capital opportunity — where a tiny start-up’s revenue can spike 27,000% or more over a short period of time. Buying shares is easy, but will take a little more work than it takes to buy regular U.S. stocks. The majority of online brokers will allow you to buy shares.”
So who is it? Thinkolator sez this one seems most likely to be tiny Ilika (IKA on the London Stock Exchange, there is a US OTC symbol at ILIKF but it doesn’t really trade as far as I can tell), a small R&D company that calls itself a solid state pioneer and was spawned (15 years ago) from some materials science work at the University of Southampton, with some initial work with Sony and others on trying to make safer and non-flammable batteries by using a solid electrolyte instead of the liquid in Li-Ion batteries.
Why this stock? Aside from the fact that it went from 10,000 shares traded a day for most of the previous few weeks to 500,000 shares traded yesterday, when this ad presumably was getting signups, it also matches the other clues quite well. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be someone else — the clues are not very specific and there are lots of hopefuls in the solid state battery space, and every major manufacturer in automotive or electronics is investing in it as well… all of which have much bigger R&D budgets than the little guys. Other relatively unknown battery names I came across that are working in the area, just to name a few, include Maxwell Technologies (MXWL), Nano One Materials (NNO.V, NNOMF), and the once-bankrupt A123 Systems (now, like the original Fisker car company, owned by Wanxiang). (None of those come close to matching the clues, by the way, just examples).
And it is really overwhelmingly tiny, with a market cap of under $30 million (about GBP$18 million right now)… so to some degree that’s actually an argument against it — it’s hard to justify teasing an illiquid $30 million stock to a huge audience, particularly one that you’d have to buy on the London Stock Exchange… and it’s a very low-priced stock at about 18 pence, so even the big burst in trading that Ilika saw on the day this ad rolled through wasn’t that big: It amounted to only about $100,000 worth of shares changing hands. A lot more than usual, but not a lot for an Investorplace/Stansberry ad campaign.
Ilika’s important product line is called Stereax, and they’ve recently been focusing on automotive applications after making progress on thin film lithium batteries (yes, they’re still lithium batteries — they just use a solid electrolyte instead of the liquid one in most li-ion batteries, partly because it’s the liquid that makes them so flammable and dangerous, apparently). The first wave of products are likely to be using their M250 line in small medical devices and sensors that can handle moisture and hold a trickle charge well, and their high-temperature P180 that’s most likely to be used first in Internet of Things and industrial sensors, possibly including small automotive applications — the real “electric car” possibility is with Goliath, which is not as far along. Probably the best quick overview is their presentation to an investor conference from November, and they do a decent job of explaining their basic battery technology here.
Ilika has been public for quite a while as a microcap R&D company, with essentially flat revenue over the past five years (about 1-2 million pounds a year). So that doesn’t quite match, but it’s fairly close — mostly because they just got a big 4.2 million pound grant from a UK electric vehicle challenge. They are aiming to be similar in business model to the chip design firm Arm Holdings, which is no longer independent but was a huge gainer for a while as it licensed its basic semiconductor architecture designs for all kinds of products.
Their hoped-for scaling up of solid state battery production using their technology is still a ways off, but they sound fairly ambitious — partly because of funding from the Faraday Battery Challenge and other grant programs in the UK — and think they can have a pilot plant in operation late this year to prove the manufacturing technology and process, then have a joint venture with a large manufacturer perhaps as soon as 2020, maybe with additional grant funding.
It all sounds quite cool, frankly, and I do like the Arm-like “asset light” model of patenting and proving technologies and then licensing them to much larger partners who can fund the heavy lifting and manufacturing and pay a relatively modest royalty or license fee. But, of course, a lot of their work is still not ready for prime time (including Goliath), and they don’t have many licensees or partners yet who are actually producing anything (the vast majority of their… but they do sound optimistic (you can hear a presentation from them a few months back here).
And, of course, this little UK solid state battery technology developer is not the only company working on this area. They have competition both from the established lithium ion battery companies, whose products are far better now than they were a decade ago, and from lots of other solid state researchers. They are focusing on areas where current batteries really don’t work at first, particularly with small-scale medical implants that are matched with little energy harvesters.
There are other companies that could be possible matches, for sure, and most of the possible end users are experimenting with lots of different designs and technologies for solid state batteries… or, probably more accurately, sampling lots of designs that have come out of little R&D organizations and university labs to see which might be practical for them.
One company that I see mentioned a lot is Ionic Materials, for example, and their “pouch” batteries appear to be the ones that McCall used in the “shooting your battery” video examples in his ad (it looks like he actually just lifted the video itself, though I’m not sure)… but though they’re a fairly similar size to Ilika and may be larger in terms of the amount of money they’ve raised, they’re still venture-funded, with investments from lots of big names including Total, Nissan, Hyundai, Renault and Franklin Templeton. That’s probably a better initial funding strategy, frankly, than having to trot your CEO out to justify the long-term nature of your materials science R&D to small investors twice a year like Ilika has to, but venture funding wasn’t so easy 15 years ago when Ilika was getting started… and it doesn’t really mean that one of them (or the dozens of other early stage competitors) will “win.” Ionic uses a polymer, by the way, which is fundamentally different from the thin film batteries from Ilika, but there are plenty of companies working on both those basic material structures.
And Volkswagen made a bit of a splash recently by investing $100 million in Quantumscape, one of the battery companies backed by the billionaire folks at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, so there’s a lot of money floating around in this space — that means this one lithium solid state battery tech company just raised more in one deal than Ilika has spent on its R&D and development in a decade… which doesn’t mean it will “win,” of course, but does mean that there’s a lot of global money chasing the same basic idea.
Another to get some recent venture funding was Solid Power… and it wasn’t that long ago that Dyson got into the business in a high profile way with his acquisition of Sakti3, which has now been written off to a large extent… though Dyson is still apparently working on his secret electric car project and on solid state batteries. Also venture-funded in the UK is Superdielectrics, which is hoping to develop supercapacitors using specialized polymers for solid batteries… or maybe for faster charging stations. There are dozens more, and they all sound really cool.
Solid state batteries are widely perceived as being the next likely standard, whether that’s in four or five years or 15 years… but if it was at all obvious, even to insiders, which battery technology would end up being the best, or which patents would be critical, these would not be little independent sub-$50 million companies or venture-funded labs or university research projects… and if the auto companies or battery companies, which spend billions on acquisitions each year, are not sure enough of the winner that they’d just buy them out at a tiny price, well, there’s not much reason for us to be sure, either. Quantumscape apparently now has an implied billion-dollar valuation as a currently fashionable venture favorite, but there are lots of others who tried and failed to do similar things in the past decade, and plenty of others who are well funded and will fail — that’s just the likely long odds for a new battery technology, it’s hard to become a new “standard” and make it into commercialization.
But still, looking for winners is fun… and whether or not Ilika is actually McCall’s primary teased stock, I did find it interesting and could see myself gambling a little bit on their progress over the next 3-5 years. This is a stock that would probably require patience and a willingness to lose your entire investment… they do have some revenue, and it is growing, but it’s all for very early-stage work on low-volume products or prototypes, with the most advanced batteries (not for automotive, but for small sensors) likely to be in prototyping stage this year.
Whether they reach a large-scale commercialization agreement with anyone for any of their technologies or not is at best a coin toss over the next few years — and it would probably require a large-scale agreement to manufacture their batteries, and then also license those batteries to a substantial original equipment manufacturer, to really provide the sexy returns that everyone hopes for (most companies don’t build their own batteries, so they’ll need to partner with a battery company and the eventual OEM that designs the battery into some end product).
The stock could move on anything, of course, just having a tiny market cap with low volume means any bit of news or attention is likely to drive the shares in one direction or another… and I imagine there are plenty of frustrated shareholders who’ve been speculating on this “next great idea” for a few years, since the stock is down more than 80% from its 2014 highs (and in a fairly straight line, as revenue has been quite flat and they’ve essentially just been burning through research funding and grants and, occasionally, selling equity to raise more R&D money).
I’m going to be watching this one, partly because I like but haven’t bought any solid state dreamers just yet. If you’ve got any stocks you prefer in this space, or are better matches for the limited clues, well, feel free to toss ’em on the pile for our consideration — just use the happy little comment box below. Thanks for reading!
Blue Solutions any thoughts
Blue Solutions -sold state batteries and TDK the same -any thoughts
Negative correlation: The more you pay for the service, the crappier the recommendations.
These 50 cents, five-letter-symboled pink-sheet stocks never work. Was Apple, Microsoft, Amazon.com, Google floated as this pink-sheet garbage is? Perhaps, I don’t know.
I’m familiar with McCall. He used to work for a guy named Marc Mandel on a chintzy financial radio show “Winning on Wall Street” that broadcast on two stations out of Boulder, Colo. Mandel was the “Whiz” McCall was known as the “Whiz Kid.” McCall’s former boss taught him well.
Yes this is revelutionary I like grafine tech also for my latest project I’ve been looking for a battery solution that makes sense. That is safe and non explosive. and waterproof. This may work if so I will be very happy to intergrate this concept into my future projects.
My ‘Thinky’ says glass is made from sand which is a form of silica. How it will be processed I don’t know. However, it should make a cheaper Powerwall thanTesla as well as power cars etc.!
It’s 0.37 on the Pink Sheets Travis!
ILIKF ILIKA PLC 0.37 Technology Stocks PNK
It’s 0.37 on the Pink Sheets Travis!
Any patents yet?
Jumped >50% today, likely to fall over the next week or two, so probably not a good time to get in.
https://kilowattlabs.com/ supposedly offers capacitor battery storage systems for sale right now. I don’t know anything about the company…just thought I’d pass it on.
Hi everyone this Quantium Battery explosion is truly the next craze. The stocks are going to hit the roof. It’s is revolutionary and disruptive. I will be looking into using it for future projects.
SAVE YOUR MONEY it is an intellectual wet dream. The great thing about having science and engineering education, it let’s you filter all these moronic pipedreams. Physics, Chemistry and common sense will not allow this to happen–unless Bob Lazzard’s element 115 is now viable. Move away from the curtain ……there is nothing to see here.
Who are the most probable Quantum (Solid State) Battery Manufacturers?
Exactly, I am trying to find companies on the stock market, but can´t. Can anyone help?
Join the discussion…Signet International Holdings has what appears to be the real next “power dominator” ready to hit the market. Theirs makes more sense then the one above.
You should be jailed
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SIGN/
Signet International Holdings, Inc. (SIGN)
Other OTC – Other OTC Delayed Price. Currency in USD
Add to watchlist
0.1591-0.0759 (-32.30%)
At close: February 14 1:41PM EST
I haven’t teased out another stock. Fascinated by this technology and I am wondering of the two-material structure mentioned in the article to develop quantum batteries which substance produces fewer greenhouse gases when it is being produced, polymer by Ionic or the thin film by ILkia?
I think the company that will be the big winner is Broadbit, launched in Finland in January 2013, they are using Goodenough process. I believe they are still a private company the last time I checked.
BroadBit is a technology company developing revolutionary new batteries using novel sodium-based chemistries to power the future green economy. We have already made high performance lab samples and are now commercializing the technology for next generation electric vehicles, portable electronics, starters and grid energy storage. Their batteries enable Increased range/use time, Longer lifetime, Reduced cost, Improved environmental friendliness, Improved robustness, and Scalability to any production volume.
The batteries are based on metallic sodium and other widely available and plentiful compounds. Our main active material is sodium chloride (NaCl), also known as table salt. BroadBit is also developing a high power capable battery electrolyte
A friend and skeptical colleague, a Professional Electrical Engineer, Steve Goreham has written extensively about the fallacy of Green Energy ( see Amazon for his many books ). He has recently penned an article about the inadequacy of existing and future battery technology—-https://www.cfact.org/2019/07/02/battery-storage-is-an-infinitesimal-part-of-electrical-power/.
These Green Dreams are illusions of the ill-informed, and hard-science ignorant green shamans and general public.
You won’t see any dramatic GRID energy storage contribution of batteries despite the ignorant, agenized. virtue signaling politicians promoting this marginal technology. Oh—and the enormous sums of taxpayer money funneled into crapitalism ventures—-Solyndra, AON, A123, Ener1 to name a few or the many Obama sponsored failures. Now promoted by Rocket Scientist Susan Collins.
It’s a little unfortunate that Goreham makes some fundamental mistakes in the article referenced above. In particular, he mixes up the notions of power (watts) and energy (joules, or watt-seconds, or related units such as MW-hours). For example, he quotes storage costs as $/kW, when it should be $/kWh. Similarly, he says that NY is going to install 3000 MW of battery capacity, when presumably he means MW-h. It might just be that he forgot to add the ‘h’ after each of these, but it’s also possible that his numbers are simply wrong. The US DoE estimates 2018 battery costs at about $200k/MWh (https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/71714.pdf), and overall storage system costs at 2-4X that, so a 3000 MWh system should cost about $600M for the batteries and maybe $1-2B for the whole system (much less than the $7B Goreham suggests). Of course, Goreham is right that for a 9000 MW wind plant, 3000 MWh of storage will only store 20 minutes of power at full capacity, which doesn’t seem like very much. However, the load-levelling can occur at the system level, not just locally, so it’s hard to know if this is enough or not.
Need to check out Zap& Go another UK battery company.
FWIW I’ve been monitoring Maria Helena Braga and her glass battery ever since I saw an interview several years ago.
Tesla has recently purchased Maxwell and I’ve been wondering if there will come a time when Tesla integrates not only the Maxwell technology into their batteries but some portion of the glass battery technology too.
I read a few months ago that they have a new process with graphene that is manufacturable, they can coat glass with graphene. This makes the glass tougher so it can last at least 100 years. Perhaps this is the technology that will make glass batteries the next big thing or will be.
ILIKA can be purchased on the OTC BBN under stock symbol ILIKF. The stock spiked on 6/28, going from .36 to .58, but almost immediately fell back after profit taking. The stock has since collapsed and currently trades for .28. I’ve held this stock for almost a year and still own it. I bought shares both on the LSX and the OTC.
The classic pump and dump
Nice work. Thank you.
Two points:
1) like all commentators you fail to dare mention the fact that sometimes potentially disruptive technologies are bought up and shelved, buried etc by powerful vested interests who rightly see them as a threat to the status quo or a threat to the slow incremental rate of progress they are determined to maintain.
Instead, all commentators/journalists only ever blame the upstart startup company itself for failing or for taking forever to bring its product to production.
Oil companies and military-industrial “entities” are especially cognizant of potentially disruptive technologies / research that could threaten their dominance and they may decide to make “unrefuseable” offers to potential disruptors if and when they see fit.
2) you rightly include a positive comment about Superdielectrics Ltd(UK) – but you wrongly say they have ambitions in the area of solid state batteries. They are entirely focused on highly energy-dense polymer-based supercapacitors – not batteries.
Too many commentators conflate and confuse supercapacitors with batteries – they are distinctly different energy storage technologies…even if the batteries are “solid state” they’re still not supercapacitors aka supercaps aka ultracapacitors.
Paul G
If you want to know the latest I suggest you go to the source. I am
not saying Ilika is not the best choice, but the following is from a
major player in Graphene so look at this company presentation and then
lets expand this conversation.
http://www.talgaresources.com/irm/PDF/2209_0/TalgaPresentationatIDTechExShowEurope2018
Yep! Got some of that Southampton England Stock ! Thought it would cover all the metals barking at the food dish for investors: Vanadium, lithium! Soo why not try a 1000+ shares in a silicate derivative!
This realist believes in the untapped potential of sand and static electricity generation, and secondarily stored up kinetic motion! But always in tandem batteries…note the (nice looking) Tesla police car that ran out of charge during a high speed chase! At least have a tandem battery pack like some Sharp (?) home vacuum cleaners, so when one battery runs down it automatically shunts over to a fresh one!
Basically this concept of a central battery is a side ways jump into the same logic using an energy storage, not generation concept as if a parallel equivalent to a high torque combustion engine! No battery in use now, unless dragged on a small flat bed (which uses energy too) behind the battery powered vehicle, is, with current advances, big enough to approximate the thrust and miles range required to serve as a “central combustion engine” replacement in a car!
So the concept does not •translate• perfectly from a combustible concentrated ignitable liquid carbon fuel in a tank with managed combustion/ignition •to• a battery storage system of previously combusted energy, with its unavoidable capacity limitation as second stage stored combusted energy!
Always felt using a huge battery to replace a central internal combustion engine was childish logic, an irrational pipe dream, poor engineering innovative non-thinking!
In a non-scientist’s view trained only by a trial and error father! A professor gentleman farmer, my father-experimenter, was always low budget! But he offered a ln unlimited space and parts and our escape from the hardware store to solo offer a rich training ground in reasoning with a high dose of make-do-ist post WW-II optimism! Given that simple proving ground experience, it makes the police car story point to a high priced toy, a highly intelligent theoretical, impractical development! Just beautiful designs, but with no power to move forward (if the battery runs out, have to hand push along the road shoulder ! CRAZY?!)
Better than that would be a standby ; a little “‘slave’-engine” (like a standby [sports fishers trolling motor], old terminology for an adjunct motor! A nice old well-tuned Briggs&Stratton mower engine) would be a a welcome help while one dreams of a better way while straining to push a $50,000+ car in high heels and a business suit down the side of a busy road !
➡️This rings a huge bell with this victim of interim technology exposure!
Due to constant travel in a great job the state official vehicle garage was a second office!
Having had an experimental compressed gas combo gasoline van from my State employer garage guys to drive for a week awaiting delivery of a replacement permanently assigned regular State job vehicle in about 1996 …The garage service desk guys (knew them for years-many cars) had a lot of faith in this colleague’s flexibility with a Flex-Fuel vehicle!
They lightly explained how easy to use was its switch over system to the gasoline tank!
Sure?! Saw the dial duo way down upon excellerating onto a busy highway! Pulled over quickly!
It meant crawling on the ground talking on an early era “bag phone” to get switch-over directions from the state head garage!
Heading to a field work project an inspection the clock was running down, while I was learning about the simple “switch-over” they had described to use if the dial-gauge said the air-gas cylinder was running low! The “easy switch” the garage guys had described was a hand turned valve on a line (pipe) outside under the van, below the driver seat! Stiff galvanized knob was the device!
WOW WHAT PROGRESS THAT MACHINE WAS! ! Part of the GREEN “RAW” DEAL…pipe dreamers all, not close enough to real fruition! We need some more real engineering developments, before thorough marketing takes place!
Only face facts, the marketing push is obviously way ahead of the engineering “push!” Backwards, too much rather cash!
➡️Invest in oil prospecting, and gasoline refining for now!
Just an anecdotal account on how evanescent finding real mechanical physical problem solving outcomes that last, and are worth investing in! This is hands-on mechanical engineering not chip microcircuitry, or computing! A cart that people and things can sit in be moved in propelled by a horse is a form of physical mechanical engineering! Just keep feeding the horse! Foibles everyday, everywhere that Dr. Thinko helps us work past!
Lol!
Marion