Lightning Hybrids Inc.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: COMPANY - Company overview

INITIAL LIGHT BULB:

Brothers Dan and Sam Johnson, formerly chief executive officer/founder and chief technical officer of Loveland's SA Robotics, teamed with Colorado State. University's Tim Reeser to launch a hybrid car company. Dan sold his equity stake in SA last year and began looking with Sam for a new entrepreneurial opportunity.

After discovering hydraulic hybrid truck technology by sponsoring a team of CSU engineering students, the Johnsons came up with an idea for a startup that would not only pursue the $10 million Progressive Automotive X Prize (www.progressiveau-toxprize.org) but also commercialize the resulting prototype vehicle into a niche car that gets the contests required 100 miles an hour.

"There has been a great deal of interest in using hydraulic for energy storage in trucks," Sam says. "With all of the stop-and-go traffic, they are able to recover about 70 or 80 percent of the energy and then re-use it when they start accelerating again. It's turned out to be very cost-effective technology."

Lightning Hybrids now employs more than 10 full-time people in Loveland; Reeser serves in an advisory capacity, Dan Johnson is chief executive officer and Sam is chief technical officer. Their engineer father--also Sam Johnson--came out of retirement to work with his sons. "Dad keeps us in line'" the younger Sam says.

IN A NUTSHELL:

Lightning Hybrids will utilize hydraulic energy storage and other design innovations to bring an ultra-efficient next-generation vehicle to market. "We're working on a hybrid car technology that uses hydraulics and biodiesel," says Lightning Hybrids Director of Marketing Bonnie Trowbridge. "It's a very clean technology. On top of that, we want something that looked really good."

The company is slated to unveil its prototype demonstration vehicle at this month's Denver Auto Show, The longer term horizon for Lightning Hybrids is to raise outside capital and start manufacturing about 1,000 cars a year by 2012. The target sticker price for the vehicle is $40,000 to $60,000.

Besides the...