Inventory: engine parts valued at the full cost including labor and overhead. They've written down the total by $100K.
So what is this stuff? All the trial and error they've gone through trying to make an engine work. Harry once mentioned on the steam car club forum having tested 20 different piston designs. Each of those one-of-a-kind prototype pistons might have cost $1K (or more). 20 designs that didn't work X $1K is $20K of inventory at cost. What's it worth on the market? Maybe $0.50 each for scrap metal.
They still have never publicly demonstrated a working engine, so you can put your own value on the inventory of parts. Equipment: This was never broken down in detail, but there was a huge jump in value the year they had the LSR car built. Photos of their shop show an old mill and old metal lathe that would be the primary assets. (The woodworking equipment all around would belong to Schoell Marine.) There's some furniture in the office, but that's not worth much.
The biggest part of this category is the LSR car and the GG Mom boat. Both were built specifically for the Mark 5 engine, which has a strange shape for an engine. How many 100 hp vertical shaft engines can you think of?
Potential customers would have to do major rebuilds of the car and boat to put a conventional gas engine in. How many people would want to do that? Not many. So the market value of these assets is what you'd get from parting them out.
Patents: Although lots of money has been spent to get these patents, and they make nice decorations on a wall, they're only worth the revenue they generate. So far, that's been zero.
Most of the patents are for the "Schoell cycle heat regenerative engine" and its components. I think Tom will tell you that there are many, many expired patents that cover the same things, and that Cyclone's innovation was to package things differently.
I've been trying to find evidence that the "Schoell cycle" has ever been demonstrated to work, and have nothing yet. The WHE engine that kind-of works but hasn't been able to last 200 hours doesn't use the "Schoell cycle".
Several patents are for the WHE engine (same patent, but in different countries). Trouble there is that the Ohio State University engineers totally redesigned the WHE engine so it is no longer covered by the Cyclone patent.
There are lots of companies developing waste heat recovery engines, and they all know about the Cyclone patents, but nobody has has licensed them.
Previous licensees (Renovia, Great Wall, Raytheon, Revgine, Bent Glass...) haven't come back.
About the only value of these patents is to fool investors into putting up cash.
So, yeah, a bankruptcy auction won't net very much. I expect, though, that Harry has had Schoell Marine secure all these assets. When the end finally comes Harry will keep all his toys, still confident of their grossly inflated values.
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