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There's an article up on Hackaday on a proposed wireless power transmission system by tech company uBeam.
uBeam transmits power via sound, specifically high intensity ultrasound. uBeam has never demonstrated a prototype, has never released any technical specs, and even some high-profile investors that include [Mark Cuban] have not seen the uBeam working.
...
In what is perhaps the greatest breakdown ever posted on the EEVForums, [georgesmith] goes over what uBeam is, how the technology doesn't make sense, and how far you can take a business before engineers start to say, 'put up or shut up.' [georgesmith]'s research goes over just some of what makes uBeam impractical, but digging even further reveals how insane uBeam actually is.
The article is based on a forum posting by georgesmith titled "The uBeam FAQ" on the EEVBlog which is skeptical of the practicality of the approach, and critical of the reaction of the tech press.
Thousands of startups have technical problems. Why uBeam? Why make this FAQ?
Investors have given uBeam over $23 million. But that's not a big problem. It's their money, they can spend it how they want, and they can afford to lose it.
It's likely that uBeam's product will fail, if it ever launches. But that's not a problem either. Plenty of other companies take unlikely chances, and on the whole, we're better off for it. We can't succeed without failures along the way.
The problem is that uBeam's CEO, Meredith Perry, has turned the wireless power industry into a vehicle for her own self-promotion. uBeam, which has never demoed a prototype, lead Forbes to proclaim "Is this woman the next Elon Musk?"
The homepage of uBeam is also available for the curious.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday October 22 2015, @06:10PM
The real takeaway here is the shocking lack of science knowledge throughout the investment and business media nexus among the very people who are making multi-billion dollar investments. Their lack of basic economic theory is almost as bad and probably more dangerous. The miracle isn't that a new scam like this doesn't appear almost daily in the .com world, the alt energy world, the general tech fields, etc. No, the miracle is that, apparently by virtue of making up for losing money by losing it in volume, the world is still advancing at a fairly rapid pace on the tech front.
One would think that a prudent and humble venture capital firm, after being burned on scams a few dozen times, would appoint a board of folks like us to advise and drop any pitch where 75%+ of the advisory board said "snake oil!" And by 'us' I mean folks like who post here, a mix of trained and untrained but all who follow tech, have a good idea of what is actually possible and what isn't and care about these things enough to Google a bit before recommending throwing millions into something based, apparently, on nothing more than a good elevator pitch.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by PocketSizeSUn on Thursday October 22 2015, @11:56PM
Money doesn't make you smart. VC disagrees.
News at 11.