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Indianapolis Business Journal Article: "Region's Expertise in Hyrbrid Cars Goes Beyond High-profile Players" — 09/05/09

An excerpt:

To keep costs down, he wanted the car to be able to use different types of batteries, given that technologies continue to evolve. But nobody made a power control system that could handle different battery chemistries and their wildly different characteristics.

With the help of former GM engineers, Tolen's firm developed a power control system, known as the "Multi-Flex," they were happy with. But he and investors saw more potential money in the device itself than in making cars.

"We manage electrons," Tolen said. "We found it doesn't matter where they come from."

Newer battery technologies, such as lithium-ion, are preferred for hybrids because of their higher power and lower weight. Yet they're markedly more expensive than conventional lead-acid batteries or even the nickel metal hydride batteries used in most existing hybrid cars.

Indy Power Systems' control device would allow, say a hybrid truck or school bus, to mix cheaper and more expensive battery types in the same vehicle. That way a hybrid could enjoy the advantages of lithium or nickel metal hydride. Besides weighing less, these two more expensive battery types can recapture energy generated when a hybrid's brakes are applied.

Indy Power is also in talks with customers for other potential applications, such as putting its technology inside a cell phone affixed with a photovoltaic strip to allow charging by the sun.

Tolen's team is also validating their electronic brain's ability to manage and blend bigger power, allowing an industrial building, for example, to balance multiple energy inputs-from the grid, from a wind turbine and from solar power.