Thank You, very intelligent response, Swimdad623.
What do you think of EEStor?
http://media.cleantech.com/3174/eestors-weir-speaks-about-ultracapacitor-milestone
If this is real, I don't want a volt without one.
If EESTOR is real, it's a game changer. The claim is that it holds 53KWH in a $3300 energy storage unit. By comparison, the Volt holds 16KWH in a $10,000 battery. If EESTOR is real, there's no comparison.
Up until recently, I had given up on EESTOR. The secrecy, and the connection with ZENN motors convinced me that this was a classic "pump and dump" - where someone buys shares in a small company (in this case, ZENN), releases some optimistic information, lets the stock price go up, and then sells the shares. Every time someone said something good about EESTOR, ZENN stock went up 10% the next day. It looked like "pump and dump", and may still be.
One interesting piece of news is the blog by the mysterious "B", who is apparently in insider in EESTOR. Here's the link:
http://bariumtitanate.blogspot.com/
According to "B", the issue with EESTOR is that the extreme purity requirements of the EESTOR ESU required that the unit could not be built by hand, but had to be made on an automated production line. Given this, they built a few small low-voltage stacks, but can't test a full unit until the automated line is built. He also said that the line is close to completion, so we should see something soon.
Even given this, I still have some issues regarding the EESTOR ESU in the Volt. The biggest one is that the unit operates at 3500 volts (rather than the 330 volts in the Volt), and that it's a big capacitor, rather than a battery. Big voltage and fast discharge could mean potential safety issues. Keep in mind that a stick of dynamite has 1/2KHW of energy, so the EESTOR ESU has the energy of over 100 sticks of dynamite. I'm not sure if this makes it a safe product in the event of an accident. I wouldn't want to be the rescue EMT using the "jaws of life" on an EESTOR-powered Volt.
My opinion is that GM should stick with the batteries for the first few years. Even if EESTOR comes through, there's a lot of better uses for the ESU. I would definitely put one in my basement and charge it on off-peak electricity and discharge it all day. Also, the most natural use I can think of is in railroad locomotives. They already run on up to 25,000 volts and hundreds of amps, so they know how to handle this kind of power. Outside of the Northeast and Chicago corridors, almost all of the railroad lines in the US are diesel-driven, so a stack of EESTORs in a locomotive would eliminate the need for diesel in trains. I'm into the Volt to reduce the use of imported oil, so saving a gallon in a train is no different than saving a gallon in a car.