That said, given the market, I would expect about a year of analysis to get the design win, then another year or two to get first products from design into production. I find their idea of going after electric busses "first" as a stretch since a) all e-busses are currently made in China so the technology transfer would be challenging, and b) there aren't that enough municipalities committed to e-busses yet to make a viable market for Montana Energy (if they capture 100% of the E-bus market they sell about 1000 units this year, probably not enough to sustain a company).
That makes me wonder about the company.
If it is run by scientists who insist on going for the most efficient implementation rather than by engineers who understand getting the value of having anything on the market, the company will fail.
Comparing their system to the top Energy Star performers [0], and taking their performance (20 L/kWh) at face value, they win by over 8x. If nothing else, they should be selling dehumidifiers! A quick web search suggests that the US dehumidifier market is between $1bn and $2bn per year. If they’re anywhere near as good as they claim, they should be able to capture essentially the entire market, especially if they are competent at marketing. They could, in addition, attempt to integrate with the high end heat pump makers (Mitsubishi, Daikin, etc) and target the high end HVAC market.
I would be willing to believe that electric busses are a decent market (lots of time spent with doors open), but the EV car market seems like a poor target (lots of solar heating, doors and windows mostly closed in hot or humid weather, size and weight of equipment are constrained).
A long time ago I had an opportunity to interact with the highest levels of a company called "Plastic Logic" who had created a flexible e-paper display that was much more durable than the glass covered displays. They presented their business plan where they were going to market with the "Plastic Reader", basically doing the entire product and software in house. I urged and pleaded with them. I said, "You guys are brilliant at displays, you've got a killer product here. Sell it to people who make readers! You start making money right away and you get better and better at making displays. Let your customers take the market risk of getting the form factor and software right, just start by making money!"
The guy with the most sway in the company was the scientist who had actually come up with the way to make transistors on plastic and integrate them into a display. He was (and still is) a brilliant guy. But he was so smart that he felt "the display is the hard bit, everything else is practically off the shelf. Why should we give up our margin and our advantage to people who can't currently get a display with these properties. When we start shipping all other e-readers will become obsolete overnight!" (Not an exact quote but close enough from memory.)
I tried to explain how risk didn't care how good your display was, adding to existing risks of getting the displays reliably produced, the rest of the stack put dozens of other ways your product could get stalled on its way to market and the "other guys" were investing like crazy. They couldn't possibly match the software and design engineering talent people that already had a reader on the market had right now. I told the CEO straight up, I said, "This path leads to failure, it always leads to failure."
Of course they totally failed and sold off their assets a few times to various hedge funds and guess what, their display never ever made it to mass production because the brilliant guy who designed it in the first place didn't focus on that.
I'm still sad they chose that route, it could have been epic.
By this analogy, I suppose they could sell to, say, Aprilaire. On the other hand, it’s not particularly hard to stick a nice blower on their device and sell a self contained unit. Plenty of vendors will gladly sell them excellent ECM blowers.
Trying to integrate with electric buses seems extremely unwise.
They might be approaching the E-Bus market because their device needs to vent outside, and an airhandling device has easy access to vent outside, whereas a home dehumidifier often wouldn't have easy access to outside air.
In addition, an E-bus has an acute need for energy efficiency; reducing the need for energy for climate control lets you go more miles on the same battery and range on a large, heavy, EV is hard to increase. It makes sense for liquid fueled busses too, but liquid fuel allows for a pretty long range anyway.
Getting a design win on a new(ish) transportation category could have a bigger impact than competing in an existing market; although if the E-bus market is really 1000 units, they better find other applications soon. (Although if works for E-busses, it should work for any vehicle where dehumidification is happening)
That said, given the market, I would expect about a year of analysis to get the design win, then another year or two to get first products from design into production. I find their idea of going after electric busses "first" as a stretch since a) all e-busses are currently made in China so the technology transfer would be challenging, and b) there aren't that enough municipalities committed to e-busses yet to make a viable market for Montana Energy (if they capture 100% of the E-bus market they sell about 1000 units this year, probably not enough to sustain a company).
That makes me wonder about the company.
If it is run by scientists who insist on going for the most efficient implementation rather than by engineers who understand getting the value of having anything on the market, the company will fail.