Electric vehicles are the future of green technology for road transportation with plug-in hybrids serving as bridge technology. I have a long history with EV design beginning in 1976. Electric cars have been a viable alternative to fossil fuel for over 100 years. In the year 1900, twenty-eight percent of all cars sold in the United States were electric. Electric cars came before gas cars. The first crude electric carriage was developed in 1832 about 50 years before the gas car. The infrastructure to deliver electricity currently exists; it's called your wall outlet. The same cannot be said for other green options such as hydrogen. The roadway leading up to today is littered with sensible viable designs for electric and hybrid vehicles which were ignored because we leave innovation to the whims of market forces. We did not always do this. Remember NASA and the Apollo project, the Manhattan project, the Internet, and the list goes on. As a business owner I am obviously not against the free enterprise system, but when critical safety, health, or national factors are in play, relying 100% on free market forces to pick winners and losers often catastrophically fails us. This is especially true when dealing with large entrenched interests who radically tip the balance of control over innovation into their court; these interests in affect become gatekeepers.

The historic cause of EV delay after delay has been very effective roadblocks erected by those with vested interests in the status quo. The problem was never technology. If we want solutions and want to be globally competitive and care for the environment, we need to enable our small innovative companies with a Manhattan-Project-like government program. If this is not done, in my experience the vehicles which will be developed and offered for sale in the next decade will have no positive material impact on our environment or economy. In this new century we need to be nimble and not a sleeping giant. In the long run, survival always favors the small and adaptable over the dinosaur.

In the 1970's I developed an advanced viable electric car drive system at my company KJB Research Labs. The ESE Engine system was a computer controlled electrical drive system specifically designed for full electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars. This system was far ahead of its time. Multiple microprocessors were used to control all aspects of operation of both the electrical engine system and the vehicle which included kinetic energy storage, regenerative braking, an infinitely variable magnetic power coupling, and a gas powered generator for extended range.

The engine incorporates one or more integral fly wheels as an energy reservoir. The fly wheel and stator form a single integrated part inside the electric engine. A computer controlled electromagnetic clutch (coupling) is used to transfer energy from the flywheel applying it to the vehicles wheels through a variable ratio transmission. Altering the transmission ratio controls the speed of the vehicle. Regenerative braking is used to reclaim some of the energy typically lost during decelerations.

By smoothing and augmenting power demands with kinetic energy in the fly wheel, and by computer controlling all aspects of vehicle operations: throttle, braking, climate control, headlights, aerodynamics, etc... the effective range of the vehicle is maximized for all existing battery technologies. Today, over thirty years later, the current state-of-the-art production hybrid electric car is just beginning to become competitive with the ESE Engine System.