New ceramic battery may replace gas engines by 2008

Texas company is working on an "energy storage" device made from ceramics. It's not technically a battery because it doesn't use chemicals. It can allegedly charge within 5 minutes with enough energy to move a car 500 miles on about $9 worth of electricity -- about 45 cents a gallon.

According to the patent, the device is made of a ceramic powder coated with aluminum oxide and glass.

Company is very secretive, and has taken down its website.

"A ceramic power source for electric cars that could blow away the combustion engine."

Abstract
An electrical-energy-storage unit (EESU) has as a basis material a high-permittivity composition-modified barium titanate ceramic powder. This powder is double coated with the first coating being aluminum oxide and the second coating calcium magnesium aluminosilicate glass. The components of the EESU are manufactured with the use of classical ceramic fabrication techniques which include screen printing alternating multilayers of nickel electrodes and high-permittivitiy composition-modified barium titanate powder, sintering to a closed-pore porous body, followed by hot-isostatic pressing to a void-free body. The components are configured into a multilayer array with the use of a solder-bump technique as the enabling technology so as to provide a parallel configuration of components that has the capability to store electrical energy in the range of 52 kWh. The total weight of an EESU with this range of electrical energy storage is about 336 pounds.

EEStor is backed by VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and the company's founders are engineers Richard Weir and Carl Nelson