SMTR Partner Transense CEO Interview In TWST;SMTR Mentioned
The Wall Street Transcript interviewed JAMES PERRY, the Chief Executive of Transense Technologies PLC and it appeared in the 5/11 issue of the weekly paper. (In that it is about $2,000 per year hopefully some heavy hitters now will become aware of SMTR!)
Only an excerpt is available. Go to twst.com to read the entire excerpt. The parts in the excerpt salient to SMTR investors are as follows-
"....We have tied up an exclusive arrangement with an American company called Sawtec. Sawtec are working on the supply of our SAW devices for torque and for pressure. As you know, last year an act was passed in the US, the Tread Act, whereby by October 2003 all new vehicles in America must have tire pressure monitoring systems within them. Since that has happened, we have been inundated with inquiries to use our devices in this application. And, that has taken quite a lot of our time. Also last year, we signed a contract with Atmel, a major American semiconductor manufacturer. They’re making ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) for us and have just delivered of our first chips. We had been negotiating with Thompson, in France, before that. Then Thompson tied its semiconductor side up with Atmel. Basically, Atmel has an exclusive license with us to supply ASICs for our applications. In addition to that, we have signed license agreements with SmarTire, which is 10% owned by the Tier 1 supplier TRW, for tire pressure monitoring. Their system works behind the valve. We have also signed a deal with a company called 3DMI, which is based in Detroit. They want to measure pressure by using sensors that will be embedded in wheels. We also have discussions going on with tire manufactures, who want to embed them in tires. So, there are three ways our technology will be hitting the market: in the tire, in the wheel or behind the valve. We are the only people, I think, that can do that. All other systems in the market need batteries as a transmitter. All that we would have on the wheel or in the tire would be the SAW device and an antenna attached to it. We interrogate that; we don’t transmit from it. If you take passenger vehicles at 40 million a year and commercial vehicles a further 12 million a year being produced. What happens in America will happen everywhere. So once it starts, everyone will have it. But, just say there are four wheels to a vehicle. You’re talking about potentially 200 million systems a year. Now, that means a potential 200 million batteries a year with present systems. They are made of lithium; you cannot burn them because they are gaseous and you cannot put them into landfills because they could leak out into the ecosystem. So, from an environmental point of view, it could be very damaging. We are the only people out there, at the present time, with a system where you can measure that pressure without using batteries. We have actually built a system in our lab where people can come and see it being demonstrated. There are lots of people around that say they can do it. We have yet to see something that can be done as low cost or in the non-contact way that competes with us. It seems to me that everyone with a screwdriver thinks he can now measure pressure in tires since the Tread Act was passed. I can assure you it is not that easy...." |
