March 11, 2009

(America) - You only need to look at General Motors laughable "Volt" electric car project to realize what a complete and utter failure GM is.

When it was evident, 15 years ago, that political forces in the US and the Middle East would truncate the search and development of the second most available liquid on the face of the Earth, GM killed their first electric car project. Rather than work on an alternative to lead-acid batteries, they declared the project "non-functionable," and fired or reassigned the engineers working on the project.

All of that is ancient history.

It's what's happening now at GM that shows their lack of engineering and business smarts.

You've already read about the ultracapacitor and the amazing advancements in lithium-ion battery technology (concepts which were there to be discovered 15 years ago, but I digress.) For the few who don't know, a capacitor has been developed by Eestor in Texas, which can release electricity in an even flow, something which is doubted, even today, by unbelieving professors still hanging precariously to their tenure. When you add this new ability to any ion-driven battery, you develop enough power to run a real-sized car for 250-300 miles at 120 miles per hour. MIT has already duplicated the effect and are claiming a "new battery," although I suspect there may be patent infringement looming.

This amazing development would have easily been acquirable by GM over a year or so, ago. As it happens, they give MIT lasers and money all the time to develop car materials - not batteries, so my guess is this is a feint to kill or "lawyer-up" the Eestor patent. Otherwise, GM will have, as Churchill put it, "..labored long and produced a mouse."