The company claims that the benefits of cap-XX supercapacitors go beyond questions of size and charging times. Kongats claims that their ancillary improvements hack at design barriers that restrict the functionality and cost of existing portable devices. Supercapacitors deliver power without side effects that hamper batteries such as voltage ripple. This means that devices to be built with greater numbers of smaller low cost components which should translate into to broader features sets at lower costs.
Supercapacitors could help address another weighty issues for manufacturers, as global governing bodies ponder the tech-bonanza's impact on the environment. Conventional re-chargeable batteries used in mobile phones and laptops contain toxic heavy metals, considered to be one of the highest contributors to soil and water pollution. Kongats claims that the material used in cap-XX supercapacitors is safer than that used in conventional batteries, but for him lower-toxicity is only a component of the ecological benefit. "They [the supercapacitors] can endure millions of charge cycles," he said, suggesting that they present a much lower burden in terms of waste disposal over the long-term.
With recent statistics calculating mobile phone penetration rates at 60 percent in developed countries and the growing popularity of PDAs, it is not hard to understand the potential value of the company's products. Last year the company announced that it received AU$10M worth of financing from an investor group comprised of three companies including Intel Capital. Intel, known for strategic investments and partnerships, seems to be taking a holistic view of cap-XX' value.
"Internet-enabled devices that are highly portable will accelerate the growth of the Internet economy and fuel the demand for computing" said Intel Australia's David Bolt, in a statement supporting the announcement. Intel is also backing cap-XX by sharing its marketing and development expertise.
The other two members of the group are Technology Venture Partners and Innovation Capital. Innovation Capital is VC firm with concurrent operations in the US and Australia; Technology Venture Partners exclusively focuses on capital needs of Australian technology companies.
cap-XX is confident of its chances of succeeding. In a recent press communique, Kongats said "The cap-XX products are widely recognised as technically superior to those of competing companies, and are protected by US, Japanese and European patents". Most of cap-XX customers are based in the US and Asia, and Kongats expects the company to dominate the global market for supercapacitors, which is forecast to exceed US$6 billion dollars by the year 2005.
The company has already established a manufacturing plant at its Sydney base of operation and accepted a contract to supply cap-XX products to an overseas manufacturer for application in a wireless PDA device. The company to will start shipping products in commercial quantities by July 2001.
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