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Technology Stocks : Energy Conversion Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Michael Latas who wrote (3446)	3/30/1999 6:57:00 AM
From: Tom Hoff	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 8393

Mike, I believe those numbers were only for all rewritable DVD products (DVD-RAM and DVD RW). Yesterday while talking to Fred about Richo, he discovered a press release relating to Richo and several companies in Taiwan. It seems your hunch was correct. Richo just enforced their patents on several Taiwanese companies who were making CD-RW disks without a license. For anyone who doesn't know, anyone who is producing CD-RW disks has to have a license from Richo and ECD. Up to now Mitususbi Chemical was Richo's only licensee. Mitsusbi Chemical will be ECD's next licensee and then the Taiwanese companies should follow. With a little help from someone at Richo I was able to get a handle on Richo's past and future production. Richo has been supplying the OEM market+20%, and Mitusuhbi has been supplying most of the aftermarket sales. So to date about 8 million drives have been sold which would add up to about 10 million disks for Richo (at an average $10 factory price). The Richo CD-RW plant in California is about to open, which should help boost Richo's production to OEM+40% this year. OEM sales are expected to run around 12 million drives, which would equal about 16.8 million disks (now at about $7 price). Total worldwide sales for CD-RW disks are expected to be about 40 million disks in 1999. The Sony, Phillips, Richo et ... camp are slated to begin selling their DVD RW drives by years end. It's my opinion that DVD RW will beat DVD-RAM in the computer market because of it's ability to write to CD-R, CD-RW and DVD RW disks. DVD-RAM should grab the entertainment market (VCR replacement) when it reaches 4.7 gigs.

To: Michael Latas who wrote (3446)	3/30/1999 2:56:00 PM
From: jacq	Respond to of 8393

How much Nickel? The Metal hydride part of the cell may consist of a variety of materials. Some cheap other more expensive than Ni. Here is a sample, V21,Ti15,Zr15,Ni31,Cr6,Co6,Fe6. or V15,Ti15,Zr20,Ni28,Cr5,Co5,Fe6,Mn6. These are given in atomic weights. Cobalt sold for $12 Fe sold for $0.25 in 1996. per pound last time I looked. I am just submitting this to point out that nickel is perhaps only one of the components that we have to look at to calculate what the base expense for tha battery would have to be. I remember from our visit to the Troy facility that they were making belt from foam nickel but I can't remember if they were positive or negative plates. After they squashed the foam they coated it with their powders. There was 460 g of positive electrode and 570 grams of negative electrode per cell along with 200 grams of KOH. I assumed that the rest of the weight was in the casing and termination.i.e. 370 grams per cell.