I think they understand what they need to say to get investments. This could be a huge development in fuel technology. Or if could be to fuels what the Hyperloop is to transportation.
The OP explains that the main reason why they aren't delivering fuel is because they can't perform the carbon-dioxide separation cheaply enough. So, they have a plan to deliver cheap captured-carbon fuels, once they solve the issue that has consistently eluded companies seeking to produce captured carbon fuels. If they manage to solve it, great that's an awesome invention. But until that actually gets solved, they're one of many synthetic fuel companies that are blocked on the problem of carbon capture.
>many synthetic fuel companies that are blocked on the problem of carbon capture
No one is 'blocked' by carbon capture. There is ample 'low hanging fruit' CO2 emissions from e.g. breweries that are clean and don't require significant separation or cleanup. Also most if not all commercially sold CO2[0] for sale is a byproduct of other industrial processes[1], so its utilization in a synfuel would be carbon-neutral.
Even at a realistic cost of $1000/tonne air captured CO2 that is "only" approx $10/gallon of gas surcharge (9kg CO2 per gallon gas). Call it a hunch but I would imagine that there are enough wealthy and climate conscious Californians that'd buy 20-25$/gal carbon-captured gasoline judging by the number of Toyota Mirai's I see around.
[0]nominally 50-100$/tonne
[1]Haber-Bosch, for instance, will continue to emit fairly clean CO2 as a byproduct fertilizer production for the foreseeable future (until green electricity becomes cheaper than natural gas by Btu).
They still need to capture the same amount of carbon from the atmosphere. They claim that because it doesn't need to be pure carbon dioxide it'll be a lot cheaper. But that's based on an engineering assessment not an actual bill of materials from a working prototype. Just like how the hyperloop is amazing technology on paper.
Yes, I'm more than comfortable letting BMW put $12.5 million into Prometheus. If they shared even half of your confidence in this tech, they'd invest a lot more than that. My take, and likely the investors' takes too, is this is yet another carbon capture company, and it's success hinges on whether or not they can actually hit the performance their promising.
BMW are certain to understand investment strategy better than you.
Probably they are putting seed funding into a bunch of different start-ups, and will invest more as they see further evidence of viability. That is a much more productive activity than carping ignorantly from the sidelines.
Most startups flop for reasons unrelated to their technology underpinnings. E.g., incompetent website implementation.
> Probably they are putting seed funding into a bunch of different start-ups, and will invest more as they see further evidence of viability. That is a much more productive activity than carping ignorantly from the sidelines
This is exactly what I'm saying: they're testing to see if this technology is viable, because we don't know if it's viable.
"Many a slip 'twixt cup and lip", "Count your chickens", and "Grass is greener" shed as much light.
If not this one, one or six among the other dozens. It's trivial electrochemistry, so the problems to be overcome are of manufacturing, which just needs money. And, we know hydrogen and ammonia synthesis work at scale; this is extra.
Got to say I agree with this. Having read the text (thanks, neonate!), I see a lot of buzz-wordy obscurantism and complexification, and no mention of this, the core problem, except "we capture carbon dioxide in water".
