EcoMotors struck a parntership with Generac (NYSE: GNRC) this week to jointly develop fuel-efficient, backup power generators.
Generac is a large manufacturer of backup power generators for home, light commercial and industrial use. The company went public in February 2010. When natural disasters strike, Generac and other companies that make backup power generators (like Honda, GE and Kohler) tend to experience sales and stock price increases.
EcoMotors is cleantech startup formed in 2008 and backed by Khosla Ventures and Bill Gates. The company designs and manufactures efficient combustion engines that could work anywhere gas or diesel power is typically used, like in cars and trucks, boats, tractors, planes and backup power generators.
EcoMotors claims its “opoc engines” are 15 to 50 percent more fuel efficient than traditional internal combustion engines, as well as smaller and lighter to boot.
Chief executive officer of EcoMotors, Don Runkle (who spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York last month) explained the impact of the partnership with Generac to his business:
“We’re going to work with Generac to qualify the ‘EcoMotors opoc engine’ for applications in gen sets, or the power generation area. We’d expect to begin to see [generators equipped with our engines] on the market in 2013. We have engines in prototypes, now in a wide variety of applications.
Partnering with a market leader in generators— which is about an $8 billion market, compared to a larger market in automotive— we hope to get through development quickly.
It can be easier to get engines tested for this application because you don’t have to do crash [tests] to see what happens to an engine like you would with vehicles. Gen sets run at one speed, also. In the U.S. that’s 60 cycles per second, and in EU that’s 50 cycles per second. Whereas with automoative, marine and aerospace applications, you have the engine going up and down in speed, obviously. It is easier to calibrate for generators.”
Based in Allen Park, Mich., EcoMotors is currently generating some revenue from engineering services, but does not yet sell its opoc engines. In the first quarter of 2011, Waukesha, Wisc.-based Generac sales totaled $124 million, according to the company’s last available earnings report.
Runkle spoke about other partnerships and explained more about his company’s approach to clean vehicles backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC last month. Watch the video (or read the transcript) for more…
OPOC: opposed piston, opposed cylinder. So it's a new invention.
Right, the two stroke has been around for a long time, I guess. What is the most distinct...?
I would say, it's opposed pistons and opposed cylinders so we have pistons that come together to create a combustion and explosion; that is unusual. Today engines have pistons, and they pound their fist against the head, so to speak. So that's one. It does have a power stroke, every revolution of the crank shaft.
From that standpoint it is a two stroke engine. That typically is much more simpler and it has the power density, or horse power per pound than conventional engines. So, we have a single crank shaft; a little more detail that's unusual in the opposed piston world. There's been opposed pistons, the Luftwaffe flew opposed piston engines in the '30s because they had high power density and generally more efficient than other conventional engines.
W e've made significant improvements since those days.
Right, moving beyond the specs. So can you tell me what sort of efficiency it can deliver? You said the upper range is 50% more efficient than a typical combustion vehicle. Is that correct?
Yeah, we have pretty outrageous claims for the engine. On efficiency we're between 15% and 50% more efficient, depending on the configuration. I showed a slide this morning on how two different versions worked. We have twice the power density, so we're about half the weight and half the size of a conventional engine; when I say a conventional engine, the engine that has been on the top of the pyramid for a century is the four stroke, four cycle engine, that's what you probably drove here today in taxi cabs.
Everybody has four stroke engines because it has been the best solution, in terms of efficiency and so forth for a century.
Actually I took an electric bus with a class A123 battery. I learned from Rick Fuls yesterday. But so can you tell me a little bit about what it would take, you were the VP of engineering at GM and have had this distinguished career in automotive. What would it take for a company like GM or VW, where your cofounder, the inventor of this technology hailed from, to begin to use this in their production line?
It's pretty straight forward because it's an engine change. So the car companies do engine changes all the time, you have a four cylinder in and you want more power, so you end up putting a V6 in there and so you have to change lines and radiators and stuff like that, but you don't have to redesign the whole car.
Since ours is half the size and half the weight, it's an engine swap . I would say it's far easier to change the engine from whatever they have to this engine, than it is to make that car an electric car, or a hybrid vehicle, or a plug-in hybrid. That's combining two generally different types of technologies; internal combustion combined with electrification.
I've done many of those and so it's much easier to do that. Now we could take advantage of our unique architecture, it's very low and very dense, to make a car that was far more aerodynamic because the hood line could be a foot and a half lower. So not just millimeters, but a lot lower. Much more dense power, that's always a good thing.
So if you were designing a new car you could take advantage of it. But if you chose not to design a new car but just take the advantage in the engine, you can put this in and do it. We're doing it, we're doing our vehicle right now with exchanging engines.
Can you tell me a little bit about the partnership with Navistar? What can we expect to see as a result of that deal?
Earlier this year, I think it was the end of February, we had a press conference, we signed a couple deals with Navistar. Navistar is a big commercial vehicle engine and market leader in full size trucks. The one deal is a joint development agreement doing the emissions development, completing our emissions development, improving efficiency and all the other things that their interested.
With our architecture however, and so that's the one contract and its a cost sharing to do that, and then we've also signed commercial agreements for licensing our technology, our architecture so to speak, so that they would go into production and make engines. So that is basically the two things.Okay For, for commercial vehicles like class 4 through 8.
Class 8 is like over-the-road big 18 wheelers, class 6 is like delivery trucks and so forth.
When does this hit the road?
It's hard to say. It obviously depends on the success of the development agreement. I think if you would talk to their CEO, he would say, "How about 2013?" And if you talk to the guy over there that has to do it, harried tech, he'd probably say 2014. But in and around that timeframe.
Well, looking forward to seeing that, and a last closing yes or no question. You said on the main stage that people who believe that EV technology is sort of the "end all-be all" for environmental concerns should be more aware of the full carbon footprint, because much of the world's electricity today is produced by coal.
If you took out the coal equation and used renewables or emissions-free technology, somehow close to emissions-free, would your cars still be more lower carbon footprint thanan electric vehicle?
No, at that point it wouldn't be, because obviously we still have a carbon footprint. If you ignore where electricity comes from, you have a fairly low carbon footprint. But it's irrelevant, because you can't ignore where it comes from.
Absolutely yes. I appreciate the pragmatism. I think it's too often overlooked.
You don't discover electricity. You discover oil, but you don't discover electricity; you make it. You don't discover hydrogen; you make it. And you have to count the making. You can't pretend it's not there. Now, you can do it with wind and other things like that and they're unreliable from afind out if the wind's blowing or if the sun's out.
So you need a way to store that energy over time. You can do it by pumping water uphill, and running it down. You can do it with batteries, you can do it with the capacitors, and so forth. But you can't ignore the making of electricity.
Really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for coming out to New York. Shout out to Michigan?
My pleasure. I'm glad to be here. It's a very interesting conference.
Happy travels.
Okay, thank you. Okay.
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