In the wake of the epic fail that is the U.S. automotive industry, Mike Rocke, Vice President of Business Development at Transonic Combustion suggests that their fuel injection technology, “is a way of putting the American car business back on its feet.�
While U.S. auto execs try to make up for flying private jets to beg for money and for the last 30 years of Ford Mustang design and for the Hummer and, I’ll just stop there, Transonic Combustion is working on a piece of “bolt-on� equipment that can double gas mileage for high-compression engines.
Transonic is VC-funded by Venrock, Rustic Canyon Ventures, and Khosla Ventures and has a lot going on:
- It has a new CEO -- Brian Ahlborn has joined the company as its new president and CEO. He was most recently the president of McLaren Performance Technologies and has lots of automotive industry experience. He replaces Mike Cheiky, who brought the company out of the lab in 2006 and will remain on the board. Cheiky is working on his next startup, CleanPlanetBioFuels, which is developing “negative carbon fuels.�
- The company is “getting ready to open up a C Round of funding,� said Rocke.
- It has NDAs with, “three of the top six car manufacturers, one in Asia, one in Europe, and one in the U.S.� Rocke adds that the U.S. firm had to be “dragged kicking and screaming to the table.�
- Transonic has a demo unit installed in a drivable car.
Transonic Combustion talks about enabling “100 mpg cars� via their lean combustion process and gasoline fuel injection system. They can operate conventional reciprocating piston gasoline engines at super-high compression ratios with precise ignition timing and carefully minimized waste heat generation. Their secret sauce is a new type of fuel injector. Here’s a schematic:
Rocke says these developments will allow the “U.S. to start exporting automotive technology and equipment to the world, instead of the other way around.� Rocke also said the company is looking for DOE money.
I suggest they fly to the DOE meeting on commercial aircraft.
