Dearth of financing stalls inventor of 110-mpg engine

WAUSEON - A year ago, hundreds of people flocked to a 100,000-square-foot former factory building in Wauseon's industrial area where a Napoleon, Ohio, inventor promised to begin building engines that would travel more than 110 miles on a gallon of E85 gasoline.

But time and the economy have not been kind to Doug Pelmear's plan to revolutionize the American automobile.

The factory today is largely dark and empty, Mr. Pelmear's dreams of putting northwest Ohioans back to work are still constrained within two file drawers full of job applications, and his hopes of mass-producing his HP2g engine have fallen victim to a lack of funding.

"We can't get the banks to look at us," Mr. Pelmear said yesterday.

Mr. Pelmear said he hasn't sought money from more traditional capital sources such as investors, selling stock or bonded indebtedness, because such sources would likely cost him control of HP2g LLC - something he's unwilling to provide.

A partnership Mr. Pelmear forged with Revenge Designs Inc., a Decatur, Ind. specialty carmaker that had planned to use his engine in its upcoming "Verde" supercar, dissolved this spring.

Mr. Pelmear traveled to Washington to meet with officials in the Department of Energy on March 10, sharing his designs and testing on his prototype vehicle by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He submitted applications this month for grant funding to further his designs, and asked for loans to help him bring his engine to market.

A year ago, when he had his Wauseon factory's open house,

Mr. Pelmear had eight employees and planned to hire another 25 "within three months."

Today, he said his company has fewer employees than it did a year ago, most of them are part-time, and most of their time is spent selling and shipping his original invention, the Valley Girdle - an add-on device that makes V-configured engines more efficient.

"That's what we're living on right now, the sales of the Valley Girdle," Mr. Pelmear said.

On May 14, an attorney filed his patent application for his "internal combustion engine and method of operating same," allowing him theoretically to begin selling the engines or at least some of its technology.

He said he is trying to source the castings for his aluminum block in suburban Cleveland, the electronic components in metro Toledo, and a firm to assemble it in Adrian, but he admitted his hand-built engines would be prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of consumers.

He is moving forward with efforts to manufacture an electronic component of his technology to sell on a retail level, he said. He hopes to begin selling an aftermarket component that would add variable displacement - sequentially shutting off cylinders when they aren't needed.

He estimated the price for the component would be around $7,500, and said he hoped to begin selling and installing them in vehicles by the end of the year.

"You have to crawl before you can walk. You have to know what you can do," he said of the delays.

While Mr. Pelmear struggles to properly fund his company, automakers, inventors, and engineers worldwide are continuing to develop ways to improve fuel efficiency, said Don Walkowicz, executive director of the United States Council for Automotive Research in Southfield, Mich. The council is a collaborative research organization for the nation's three domestic automakers.

"There is no be-all, end-all to this challenge of ever-increasing fuel economy requirements. I think the industry recognizes that it's going to take many different technologies to answer the mileage needs of the future," Mr. Walkowicz said.

"Everybody's looking at this. Transmissions are being improved, hybrid-electric vehicles, battery-electric vehicles - there are many technologies being worked on."

Contact Larry P. Vellequette at:

lvellequette@theblade.com

or 419-724-6091.

41.55019 -84.13435

Doug Pelmear of Napoleon shows off his second Mustang that he converted into a vehicle that can get 110 miles per gallon. The V-8 engine runs on E85 fuel and produces 400 horsepower. JETTA FRASER Enlarge

A year ago, hundreds of people flocked to a 100,000-square-foot former factory building in Wauseon's industrial area where a Napoleon, Ohio, inventor promised to begin building engines that would travel more than 110 miles on a gallon of E85 gasoline.