If ever you were looking for an organization to root for, check out EEStor. Though it is still very preliminary, the Austin, TX startup claims to be on the road to breaking the shackles that have so far limited the practicality of alternative energy sources for automobiles.

… EEStor promised “technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries,” meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston without gasoline …

“It’s a paradigm shift,” said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed EEStor’s invention. “The Achilles’ heel to the electric car industry has been energy storage. By all rights, this would make internal combustion engines unnecessary.”

The article goes on to point out many other obstacles not yet conquered. But, any sign of progress on this front has to be good news. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. EEStor is backed by the same VC group who provided early capital for winners like Google and Amazon.

In a more general sense, let’s applaud free enterprise. Left to their own devices, here are entrepreneurs capably attacking one of the bigger problems of our day. Sure, if they succeed they’ll hit the jackpot. Some would talk like there is something wrong with that. It’s called an incentive and it produces results.

Contrast that with the gum-flapping, and promises to add endless layers of pointless bureaucracy to any process, as are the answers always proposed by Al Gore, Michael Moore and the like. Those are called dis-incentives and they produce things like Miss South Carolina, boy bands, and an obsession with Paris Hilton.