Inventor Hopes Turbine Sparks Electric Car Plan

Daniel W. McGee says he’s found the way to make electric-powered cars commonplace in America. He claims to have invented a hybrid method of merging an electric turbine with an existing internal-combustion engine and a computer that could power a full-size car cheaper and with less pollution but with just as much pep as conventional cars.

McGee is chairman of a tiny company called American Motion Systems Inc. that is based in Iowa but is moving to Camarillo, where it has an office. McGee said he’s sharing his invention first with U.S. auto makers, not the Japanese or Europeans.

He says one U.S. auto maker is paying him under contract to test his invention and that he’s in talks with another auto maker, but he has agreed not to identify the companies. He also said the invention is patented and that he is negotiating with the auto makers on development fees and royalties on future sales.

“I’m not a zealot, but I personally would like to see the American manufacturers back on top,” he said.

But McGee’s idea hasn’t gotten out of the garage yet. He’s never put his new engine into a car and driven it to prove it works.

In addition, there are hundreds of other designs for electric cars, which make the odds very long that McGee’s invention will become standard equipment in mass-produced cars.

Car makers, researchers and garage inventors have been tinkering with electric cars for decades, yet the vehicles are still experimental. Auto makers are under growing federal and local pressure to build cars in the 1990s that spew out fewer smog-creating emissions, and experts agree some type of electric car likely will be one of the alternative designs.

General Motors Corp., with resources in the billions of dollars, has been working for months with AeroVironment Inc. in Monrovia to build an electric car that could be mass produced. Last week, GM said it was proceeding with development of the car, named the Impact, but it would not say when or how the car would be built for sale.

Even if GM or another auto maker considers his invention, McGee has lots of competition. “There are probably several hundred hybrid inventions and developments going on around the world” related to electric cars, said Paul MacCready, president of AeroVironment.

GM spokesman David Sloan said McGee contacted the company late last year, but that GM does not have a contract with him. That leaves Ford and Chrysler. David Makowiec, a Ford spokesman in the area of inventions and developments brought to Ford, said he has nothing in his files regarding McGee or AMS.

McGee, 42, said that for the first time, the companies face regulatory orders to produce cars with significantly lower emissions. Some versions of the pending federal clean-air bill, for instance, would require auto makers starting in the mid-1990s to build cars that run on alternative fuels.

McGee said the car makers want that timetable pushed back because they don’t have the technology to comply, and he is publicizing his invention “to basically cry, ‘Bull! Here is the technology, let’s see you guys hunker down, roll up your sleeves and give it to the American public.’ ”

Recently developed electric cars--those powered by electricity only--suffer from several flaws. They are sluggish and have a range usually limited to less than 100 miles before the batteries need recharging. Recharging can take several hours. GM’s Impact can accelerate much like conventional cars, but it has a range of only 120 miles.

By contrast, McGee’s plan is to power a car with a conventional motorcycle engine connected to an electric turbine he has developed. There also would be a turbine in each wheel, 200 pounds of batteries in the trunk and a computer near the dashboard.

According to McGee’s blueprint, the 25-pound steel turbine draws electricity from the batteries and starts the motorcycle engine. The engine then drives the turbine, which sends electrical power to the smaller turbines that drive each wheel.

The computer governs the whole process and diverts excess electricity from the turbine back to the batteries, so they are constantly being recharged. That gives the car a range of 500 to 600 miles, he said.

The combination of the engine and turbines also gives the car the equivalent of about 150 in peak horsepower, even though the motorcycle engine consumes less fuel than conventional auto engines, he said. Because the computer-turbine system applies power directly to the wheels, it also eliminates the need for a conventional transmission, brakes, differential and power-steering system, he said.

The upshot of the system is that the engine uses less fuel, emits one-third of the smog-producing hydrocarbons of a typical six-cylinder engine and weighs one-third less than conventional cars, he said. The turbine system also easily adapts to an internal combustion engine using alternative fuels, such as ethanol, or grain-alcohol, which would further cut the car’s emissions, he said.

Peter B. Bos, president of Polydyne Inc., a San Mateo research firm, said that even though he does not know the specifics of McGee’s plan, McGee has the right approach in developing a hybrid turbine-combustion-engine format.

“There is no technology I know of anywhere in which an all-electric vehicle can achieve the range of a conventional vehicle,” mainly because “there is no battery right now that I know of that will be able to store sufficient energy for a 300- to 400-mile range,” Bos said.

“A hybrid can do that; an all-electric vehicle cannot,” he said.

McGee said his idea for a turbine-assisted car engine goes back a decade. In 1982, he started his own firm, Magna Motive Industries, and moved to Fairfield, Iowa, because the state provided $150,000 in seed money. He started two other companies, Magnetics Research International and AMS, to raise funds for specific projects, and now plans to merge the three and move his operation to Camarillo.

The three firms, which only do research and development work, will have about $1 million in revenue this year, said McGee, adding that he has about $500,000 personally invested in his businesses. He’s also working on similar turbines that can make motors in washing machines, generators and refrigerators more efficient.

But what’s to stop the U.S. auto makers from simply ignoring his technology? “Nothing,” he said. “But if, in fact, that’s how it goes, we’ll use the revenues from these other market areas and become an auto manufacturer.”

Of course, since Walter P. Chrysler started his own company in 1925, which is the most recent successful, mass-production car company, Henry J. Kaiser, Preston Tucker, Malcolm Bricklin and John DeLorean have tried and failed to sustain their own car companies.

But McGee said, “If you have a commanding technological lead . . . I think it’s quite feasible to get into the automobile business.”