I don't get it. Why isn't Google investing in this along with robot self-driving cars? Why isn't Khosla investing in this? Or is this the article that gets them interested?
I don't pretend to have the engineering knowledge to know whether this will work or not, whether it's snake oil or not, but surely, if an electric sports car for the rich can get funded, so can this guy. I'm assuming the guy isn't peddling snake-oil, the circumstances certainly seem to indicate that he's sincere.
Is it that he needs a super-salesman to the money? Godin, Kawasaki, surely one of them would step up for the potential for good and profit that is possible if this technology is feasible.
This sounds to me (mechanical engineer but not in this field) a lot like the light bulb problem Edison faced.
Until Edison found the proper filament material, he had an empty glass jar with leads in it and a theory. As soon as he found the proper filament material, he had an invention that changes the world.
The concept here is great. Heat hydrogen to create differential pressure, extract ions by forcing it through a membrane, repeat. Note that the key part of it is the membrane. The primary problem in fuel cells is the same thing - the membrane.
It becomes basically a materials problem at that point.
That is not to say that it is easy, but that it is different. Once I have a few square inches of the proper material I no longer have just a proof of concept or a prototype, I have a full fledged device. The whole issue is figuring it out once and that might take a long time.
(Sure there are more issues, like extracting water from the fuel cell or increasing efficiency or lowering cost, but the bulk of it is that first initial problem.)
It might turn out that whatever it takes to make this membrane is crazy expensive, and that it doesn't make economic sense. Or maybe it will start out expensive and it will become cheap like the filament in the lightbult. I don't know but I do know that he will probably need a heck of a lot more funding before he can show a proof of concept, and anyone waiting for it to work will be far to late to get in on the action.
It seems like he still needs to proof that his idea is working. Other scientist say that it seems to be a good idea. So investing in this is a huge risk since even though the concept might actually work it may turn out that there's economical sane way to enter mass production. In addition there's still the doubt of "too good to be true" because it usually is. On one hand it is probably this kind of thinking which makes us pass on great opportunities, on the other it keeps us from sending money to help getting a multi-million dollar transaction through.
Somewhat related also with the funding problem but on a larger scale was this guy
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606#
Judge for yourself if you would invest 1 billion to (prehaps) get a working fusion reactor.
IT seems that he has focused on the academic side of this more than commercial, though he seems to have a staff suitable to commercializing this. Maybe the DARPA or whomever gives him better terms on his deal than he'd get from Khosla?
It does mention PARC investing and owning parts of his patents.
I don't pretend to have the engineering knowledge to know whether this will work or not, whether it's snake oil or not, but surely, if an electric sports car for the rich can get funded, so can this guy. I'm assuming the guy isn't peddling snake-oil, the circumstances certainly seem to indicate that he's sincere.
Is it that he needs a super-salesman to the money? Godin, Kawasaki, surely one of them would step up for the potential for good and profit that is possible if this technology is feasible.