Posted on 07/22/2010 9:01:35 AM PDT by flowerplough
Alex Severinsky, a Soviet emigrant who began his career developing antitank-warfare instrumentation, patented a system for powering gas-electric hybrids in 1994. Toyota used his system for the Prius without permission or payment. Until this week.
Alex Severinsky recieved his master's degree in electrical engineering from the Kharkov College of Radioelectronics, in Kharkov, Ukraine, in 1967. Eight years later, he earned his Ph.D. in the same discipline from Moscow's Institute for Precision Measurements in Radioelectronics and Physics. Three years after that, he emigrated to the United States as a refugee.
On September 6, 1994, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Severinsky a patent for a high-voltage method of powering gas-electric hybrid vehicles. He called the method, and the technology involved in it, "Hyperdrive." The filing was the culmination of years of work and research, and it represented an early version of the thinking that led to the drivetrain in most modern hybrids.
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A clarifying point: Contrary to popular belief, Severinsky's patents are not for hybrid cars or hybrid systems in their entirety. Hybrid vehicles have existed for as long as the automobile, if not longer, and the principle is not new. Severinsky's patents focus on a problem of implementation: the method by which torque from an electric motor is seamlessly blended with that of a gasoline engine. In a nutshell, his company owns the notion of back-and-forth cooperative management of an internal-combustion engine and an electric motor.
Put another way, the digital integration of countless variables — engine speed, road speed, throttle position, load, air density, etc. — into the gas-or-electric-power decision that a hybrid car makes countless times a day? That's his.
(Excerpt) Read more at jalopnik.com ...
Green Mailer.
BS.
He just won the patent lottery.
Seems pretty obvious to one only minorly skilled in the art of automobiles and digital controls.
Hey, a patent is a patent. If you think of it first and protect your idea with a patent, it doesn’t matter if someone else discovers it independent of you. The patent still stands.
Remember the transition to the over-sized tennis racket back in the 70’s. It put the Prince racket at the top of sales, and since their larger head racket was patented by Prince, any other company that wanted to produce a bigger racket was required to pay a royalty to to so.
The kind of immigrants we want in this country. Innovative, hard working, etc, etc.......
This reminds me of the guy who invented the monoshock for dirt bikes(motorcycles)and it was stolen by Honda. I forget the guy’s name at the moment but he eventually won his lawsuit.
The application of electronic control to just about any system or combination of systems is pretty obvious these days (and has been for decades).
Yeah, but this is reflecting back 10 or 15 years, I thought.
The guy (a Northwest Airlines’ pilot) who had the idea to put wheels on suitcases is now a multi-mega-millionaire because he patented the obvious.
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