Wonder battery mystery

Pretoria - South Africa is getting an electrically powered passenger vehicle, the Joule. And it's going to be manufactured in large numbers by motor manufacturer Optimal Energy from 2013, Sake24 reported on April 4.

The initial planned production of 4 000 vehicles per year will be pushed up rapidly to 50 000 by 2013. That will put Optimal Energy high up in the rankings of local car makers within a year or two.

Optimal Energy plans to tap the local market for funds around October 2009, Sake24 reported. Investors should start looking out for this opportunity even now, as something to avoid at all costs.

The concept is just a dream a journalist was able to write a glowing article about, something to be discussed excitedly around the braai.

I've got nothing against the writer or Sake24, or even the photographer or artist who produced the dinky picture of the Joule.

The two statements that I am concerned about are the ones that say the building of the plant will cost R1.5bn, and that Optimal Energy plans to look for private capital by the end of 2009.

I hope these two statements start alarm bells ringing.

A passenger vehicle consists mainly of two components: the chassis and the drive chain. The latter is significant for the Joule; anyone can build a chassis.

The drive chain consists of three components, only one of which is important here: the power source. The only effective source of power developed over the more than 100 years that passenger vehicles have been around is the internal combustion engine.

This has now fallen out of favour with everyone, including President Obama. That's why America alone is now spending billions (of dollars, not rands) to produce electrical passenger vehicles, preferably the kind you can quickly plug into an electrical socket when it needs recharging: the so-called plug-in option.

Electrical motors are now being manufactured worldwide at a cost of billions, even trillions, per year. About 100 of these small motors are now being built into most of the fancy cars one can buy.

Hard facts, please!

Replacing the dirty internal combustion engine with an electrical motor doesn't take much skill. Billions of electrical motors that can do the job are already available.

To turn an axle - that's the power required - an electrical motor needs electricity. In a stationary environment, such as a mineshaft, a copper cable brings power to the motor. A train gets its power from cables suspended above the railway line.

For a passenger vehicle, the power has to be carried around in the car, and for that you need a powerful battery. And that's exactly where the Joule's dream, like that of General Motors' Chevrolet Volt, collapses. No such battery exists.

Placing SA and financial journalism - and investors too - on the winning path means not reporting on the Joule, and not publishing pleasing pictures of a sporty little car.

You need to report on the super battery and publish a picture of that, together with some solid test results.

Those of you who have filled the tank of a passenger vehicle with petrol or diesel will know that it takes about 60 litres to 65 litres. Fuel weighs about 1kg per litre.

So a full tank weighs about 65 kg, on which a good car these days can travel 600km to 1 000km. A smart, fully charged battery weighing only 65kg will probably be able to drive one of Tata's new Nanos at a very modest speed for about 10km.

The news and the massive investment opportunity are that SA is presumably on the point - less than three years from now - of developing a battery that will make electrical passenger vehicles so competitive that a small country will be making 50 000 of them by 2013.

Let's rather sell the technique of the wonder battery to America. Obama will pay so much for it that no one in SA will ever have to work again.

That's the kind of investment opportunity the new generation of financial journalists should report on.

- Fin24.com