Zeuspaul: ERC licensed to Corning the rights to develop nickel zinc batteries for all applications other than powering vehicles (batteries for conventional car starting is covered in the Corning license.) Corning is highly secretive about which markets it will address first and why, and despite my whining and begging, ERC refuses to annoy Corning by telling me anything. All I know is that Corning will be going after markets that are measured in the billions of dollars. I don't know what percentage royalty ERC will receive, but it doesn't have to be much to have an impact, given the size of the markets and how few shares ERC has outstanding.
All of those applications you asked about are within the realm of possibility. ERC and Corning belive that nickel-zinc is superior to nickel-cadmium in almost every instance. So whatever the size of that market is (I don't know the number), might be a good approximation of at least some of the potential.
In some things, nickel zinc might be somewhat better than what is presently being used, but not enough that it would be Corning's first target. For example, it would probably make a better car battery than lead acid, but would cost somewhat more, which is a big drawback for that application. On the other hand, nickel zinc has much better performance in the cold than lead acid, so maybe a niche product gets developed for the Alaska and Scandanavia markets. |
