"It's nice we were picked in the top 10, but we're way
more ambitious than that," he remarked. "The company
was set up to solve society's problems. We're changing the
world. You can't have civilization without energy."
In 1960, he and his wife Iris, a Ph.D. in biochemistry,
founded ECD. Mr. Ovshinsky, a machine tool builder who
came to Detroit from Akron to ply his trade, developed the
battery after extensive research into amorphous and dis-
ordered materials. He discovered a way of storing energy
and data in batteries that abandoned crystalline struc-
tures.
"I came out of nowhere," Mr. Ovshinsky says. "I was
truly a paradigm shift. I was not greeted with open arms.
But you can't open a scientific journal now without read-
ing about disordered materials."
In 1982, ECD helped establish the Institute for Amor-
phous Studies in Bloomfield Hills.
ECD and its subsidiaries and partners, including Ovon-
ics and United Solar Systems, hold 160 patents for the
products and supply 15 licensees with the batteries, con-
ductor material and electrodes. United Solar Systems,
which manufactures the thin-film semi-conductor mate-
rial, has paired up with optics giant Canon to produce pho-
tovoltaic products like solar shingles for residential and
commercial purposes. In July, the Russian Ministry of
Atomic Energy entered into an agreement with ECD to
develop solar energy-generating and storing products and
nickel-metal-hydride batteries for the conversion of de-
fense resources to consumer products. The Ministry will
provide an initial cash investment of $13 million to ECD
and its Russian partner, Sovlux.
GM and Honda have entered into joint ventures with
ECD to make and use the batteries in cars, although GM
Saturn's newly unveiled electric car is powered by a lead
acid battery, still a cheaper alternative to the Ovonic
"green" battery, which runs on solid hydrogen.
Honda plans to use the Ovonic batteries for its electric
vehicles, Mr. Stempel said, and GM will eventually go to
them once it becomes more cost-effective.
On a recent sunny day, ECD workers, technicians and
scientists — a multicultural gathering — come out to watch
a few novices try out an electric car and scooter.
After flipping a switch, the Solectria, a retrofitted Geo
Metro, is ready to roll. It makes no noise, emits nothing
and actually has punch. It is no heavier than a car with a
typical internal combustion engine. Same with the
scooter.
Subhash Dhar, president of Ovonic Battery Co., said
they've doubled the range of the scooter, from 21 to 60-
plus miles on one charge. Stephen J. Hudgens, ECD's blue
jean-clad vice president of research and development, gives
a tour of ECD and United Solar Systems, hopping in his
Porsche to cart around the visitors. Like his boss, he is a
"paradigm shift," a physicist out of MIT who is content
working on the cutting edge of clean technology.
Echoing Mr. Ovshinsky, he talks of the "retrograde forces
in the universe" that generate propaganda designed to
counter the progress represented by ECD.
And yet, he acknowledges that the electric vehicles may
not ever reach 100-percent market penetration until they
can go long distances.
Mr. Ovshinsky, the father of five, leans against the elec-
tric car, noting that it will get roughly 370 miles to a charge
and that the battery can be recharged in 15 minutes. The
day will come, he says, when gas stations will double as
charging stations.
He's accustomed, too, to the naysayers. A ready response
is on his tongue to skeptics who question the acceptance
of the technology by the oil companies, for one, and to
the cost of building electric vehicles.
"The cost issue is a red herring, the last refuge of a
scoundrel," Mr. Ovshinsky says.
Even 20,000 electric cars a year would create the vol-
ume necessary to reduce the cost of the technology, he says.
And customer demand for a pollution- and noise-free ve-
hicle would force the car makers to sit up and take notice.
That, he says, would be another paradigm shift.
"All we're trying to do is change the world," Mr. Ovshin-
sky says. ❑
ECD's Stephen Hudgens holds a sheet of stainless
steel, the basis of a semi-conductor manufacturing
process at United Solar Systems.
Under the hood of an electric
car: No grease there.