Torvecian,
I’m sorry to disagree with you on certain points, but I don’t see how the Gleasman’s experience can put them in a unique position to know what ‘production ready’ means.
I really have no idea of the criteria applied for small scale production as may be required for the school bus project, but mass production is the name of the game for profit and the automotive market is surely the only real target.
If the Gleasman’s are the only people on the planet to know what production ready means, this excludes all the Vice Presidents of transmission companies around the world in charge of production.
These companies have recently spent $1,000m’s developing the current cash cow, the 6AT. Does it not tell you something that going from the 4AT to this newer model is not so much a leap in technology, but more of design? Despite the relatively simple task, the sums involved should give you an idea of how much effort is required to design, test, adjust, test and so on for every last minute detail. It is a process they have to go through and one which takes years to complete.
That Torvec may have something I don’t dispute, that they could run off a number of their prototypes I don’t dispute, but to consider that any automobile company, or any of their Tier 1s, could even contemplate bypassing all of their strict procedures – well, it’s just not going to happen.
Assuming that the technology is basically sound, the cost of developing this into a production model is huge and this cost must be borne by those who take the risk to do so. It’s one thing to take this risk in the first place, quite another to also burden the company with enormous costs for buying patents for which there is no absolute guarantee of success.
I should think the most likely route is one of either a low sale price for the patents, or some sort of licensing agreement, the latter being by far the better deal if you have confidence in a successful outcome.
hebe
AI
