Unlimited energy on the cheap - just a dream?

Electric vehicles have been held up by battery production expense - but a Texas company may have the answer with a ground-breaking mega-capacitor.

Transcripts and audio files of a leaked phone conversation between the secretive CEO of Texas-based eeStore, Dick Weir, and an as yet undisclosed source have been doing the rounds online for the last 24 hours creating a stir amongst technologists and environmentalists around the world.

Whilst you'd be forgiven for thinking that a leaked phone conversation on the internet was merely yawn worthy, this particular conversation saw eeStore CEO, Weir confirming that they are mere months away from launching an uber capacitor which is an electrical component that would fully charge up in minutes yet hold enough juice to power electronic gadgets for days.

Should the scuttlebutt around this leaked conversation be something more than a cleverly orchestrated PR stunt, and eeStor's invention actually work, the implications are nothing short of revolutionary.

Electric cars could finally become a viable option. Photovoltaic solar cells and wind turbines could store their own energy, reducing global dependence on less clean forms of energy and most importantly giving us notebook PCs and iPods that charge in seconds but run for days.

If this all sounds more than a little Buck Rogers, there has been some independent corroboration of eeStor's claims.

In May ZENN Motor Company (who hold exclusive rights to the eestor capacitor system for vehicles under 1,400kg) confirmed that their own independent testing verified that eeStor's capacitors were on track to performing as promised. This said, eeStor's claims have also attracted scepticism from capacitor experts and to date no uuber capacitor prototypes have been publicly tested.

The leaked conversation delves into the ins and outs of building capacitors in excruciating detail.

The leaked conversation even alludes to a involvement with military contractors Lockheed Martin. Weir also confirms that pre-production prototypes of what he calls an electrical energy storage unit (EESU) could be revealed as soon as the end of this year.

eeStor is not the first company to claim it's about to revolutionise energy generation or storage, with Steorn announcing in 2006that they'd circumvented the law of conservation of energy with its "Orb" generator to produce clean, free and constant power.

After a botched demonstration in 2007 where Steorn blamed heat from the camera lights for the failure, Steorn has yet to deliver any free energy. Will eeStor come up with the goods? Only time will tell.