In 1978, a young Russian immigrant named Alex Severinsky came to the United States with $800 in his pocket and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. When America experienced a major oil shortage in 1979, Dr. Severinsky was amazed at the long lines for gasoline. And that’s when he first conceived the idea of developing hybrid vehicles.

Dr. Severinsky figured there had to be a better way to power an automobile, so he began looking at alternative approaches to gasoline-powered engines. He studied the possibility of pure electric and fuel cell vehicles, but reasoned that a hybrid gasoline/electric powertrain was the optimal approach.

As a newcomer to the United States with little knowledge of how to raise funds for a business, Dr. Severinsky didn’t pursue his vision right away. But once he established himself, he began to actively focus on his ideas for developing commercially successful hybrid vehicles.

Dr. Severinsky began working with the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech), a small company incubator at the University of Maryland, in 1986. He also served as a lecturer in the University of Maryland’s Clark School of Engineering and during this time his work on hybrid vehicle concepts intensified.

With support from Mtech, Dr. Severinsky founded Paice (Power Assisted Internal Combustion Engines) in 1992. Later that year, Paice filed a patent application covering his concepts for a hybrid vehicle and was issued U.S. Patent No. 5,343,970 (the ‘970 patent) in 1994. The mission of Paice was to develop hybrid vechicle technology and promote its adoption throughout the automotive industry.

This patent represented a groundbreaking technology that allowed hybrid vehicles to bring efficiency – and, therefore, commercial viability – to hybrid vehicles. That technology, recognized as one of the world’s most dominant hybrid patents, recently earned Dr. Severinsky the prestigious Thomas A. Edison Patent Award from the American Society for Mechanical Engineers. The award, presented in November 2009, recognizes the creativity of a patented device or process that has the potential of significantly enhancing an aspect of mechanical engineering. We believe this award recognizes the hard work and extensive research of Dr. Severinsky and his Paice team.

With financial support from The Abell Foundation, a charitable organization devoted to assisting the poor of Baltimore and bringing new jobs to the Baltimore area, Paice began working to develop a prototype and commercialize its technology. It invested heavily to develop software and hardware that enabled the company to successfully demonstrate the significant fuel economy improvements and emissions reductions made possible with its patented technology. Paice conducted this demonstration in a certified testing facility in 1999, and its engineering team used the results of this testing and computer simulation studies to apply Paice’s hybrid technology to various vehicle designs.

One important aspect of Paice’s inventions was the use of high voltage in a hybrid automobile. Dr. Severinsky’s patents showed that using voltage as high as five hundred volts or more was essential to achieving real efficiency in hybrid automobiles. People in the industry were skeptical that such high voltage was practical or advisable in the first instance. Paice’s demonstration in 1999 proved that high voltage was workable and was the key to getting high mileage in a high performance hybrid automobile.

Dr. Severinsky recruited top automotive talent and expertise to help Paice develop and commercialize the hybrid powertrain and method of control. Paice board members included Robert Templin, former chief engineer at Cadillac; Robert Oswald, former chairman and CEO at Robert Bosch North America who had an extensive career at Ford; and George Kempton, former chairman and CEO at Kysor Industrial. Ted Louckes, former chief engineer at Oldsmobile, joined and led the Paice engineering team as Chief Operating Officer and Nat Adamson, a former senior program manager at Ford, led the business development effort as Executive Vice President. These executives assisted Paice in its pursuit of joint venture opportunities and licensing agreements with automakers and component system suppliers.

In July 2010, Paice reached a licensing agreement with Ford covering the “970″ patent, and an agreement with Toyota covering all patents that have been issued to Paice.

Dr. Severinsky created commercially-viable hybrid vehicle technologies because he believed in the development of highly fuel efficient, clean and cost-effective hybrid electric vehicles. He wanted to reduce America’s dependence on oil and protect our environment.