Zenn and Them Old EEStor Blues

The EEStor music catalog continues to expand.

This summer's EEStor tribute folk song from James Schultz, Quaker songwriter, was a Guthrie-esque ode to EEStor's Dick Weir and Zenn's Ian Clifford and their saga of permittivity and barium titanate purity.  Schultz has released a bluesy new hit single entitled "The EEStor Blues" in which he sings (sort of sings) of being  "tired of the old NDA, no new net news blues," and laments the demise of the City Zenn. He once again manages to get barium titanate into the rhyme scheme, unique in the history of song.

In September, Zenn Motors Chief Executive Ian Clifford told Reuters that the company discontinued its plans to sell its own highway-speed EV. Instead, Zenn is betting on EEStor, the secretive startup claiming a radical advance in ultracapacitors, that will allow EVs to charge faster and go 250 miles on a single charge at low cost. Zenn abandoned its car manufacturing business to focus on the EEStor alchemy and a drivetrain built for other auto vendors. 

EV maven Darryl Siry and former blogger on these pages writes in Wired:

"This change in strategy represents a moment of clarity for Zenn – recognition that the entire value of the company lies with its speculative bet on EEStor’s game changing technology claims, and not with the expected value of its now abandoned car business.  Which means that if you attribute today’s $169 million market capitalization of Zenn Motor Cars entirely to its 10.7% stake in EEStor, the secretive and mercurial startup can announce another questionable milestone: an implied value of more than $1.5 billion."

In the words of EEStor skeptic, frequent commenter and fabled gadfly, Steve Pluvia, "EEStor is nothing more than a vehicle for a Canadian pump-n-dump, specifically Zenn Motors. Zenn has a powerful Canadian hype team supported by a crooked bucket shop (Paradigm Capital), paid promoters and degenerate gamblers. Experts in the field of EEStor’s technology do not believe the claims in their product... The trade here is to short Zenn on all pops from here forward."

Investor Vinod Khosla is also skeptical of the company and it appears as if early investor Kleiner Perkins chose not to re-up on their investment when Zenn raised their ownership stake.

In the truthy column, apparently UL has received a request to test the mythic EESU and a firm called Polarity has received a contract from EEStor to integrate Polarity’s high power HV to LV converter into EEStor's EESU.

If EEStor is real and its technology is a game changer that disrupts the world of automotive transportation – then Zenn, Weir, KP, Paradigm, Ed B. are brilliant technologists, investors and futurists.  If EEStor is a scam, we get an illustrative story of technical disingenuousness and a naive public and investor team.

And we get a few good songs. Thanks Brother Schultz.