F
ind a problem you care about and develop a product to solve it. After all the bench and flight testing
Mark Bierele was trying to set up a production line for his design, and Jim Duncalf was looking for more companies to license the concept to. In the fall of 2006 Duncalf and his brother went to the San Francisco Auto Show. There they met a
Martin Eberhard at a booth of a new company called
Tesla. Martin and his partner Marc Tarpenning had electrified a lightweight British sports car called the
Lotus Elise. They bought the drive train from another small company
Tzero and powered the drive train with
lithium-ion batteries, the same cells that power laptop computers, only this prototype had 400 kg of them.
After a little small talk, Martin explained a they were hoping to lower the weight, lengthen its range, and shorten its charging time. This looked like the perfect application for an engine that could produce a kWh of power with less CO2 than the electric grid. After a short discussion, about the potential of replacing a few hundred kg with the Rad Cam, powered generator they agreed to meet for further discussion on working together.
But Duncalf's attempts to follow up failed. Tesla's two founders and their first large investor, Elon Musk were having lots of friction. Musk had allied with the owners of the
world's electric grid as well
donating millions to politicians who are in a position to give him tax-supported subsidies. This precluded any chance of Tesla embracing the Rad Cam technology. We were shut out and a few years later Musk removed the two founders of Tesla. This is even though these two founders had led the design of virtually all of Tesla's cars except for the Cyber Truck.
Musk's alliances proved beneficial as
billions of dollars of government monies have been granted to his companies in both the US and
China. Tesla was even sold an
entire auto plant for 42 million on land that was estimated to be worth 3-4 billion. Musk quickly became the richest man in the world because of his ownership of taxpayer-funded companies.
A few months after this visit with one of Tesla's founders Duncalf and Bierele found themselves being fined for not being compliant with the
planned phaseout of all IC engines. This put the development of the Rad Cam engine on hold for several years. Hopefully, wiser heads will soon prevail. The world can survive a little more CO2, which is the foundation of all life on earth, however, the toxic emissions pumped into the air by the 4500 large fossil-fueled electric plants are another story.