Commercial product of the year: Vandyne SuperTurbo, Ed VanDyne.

• Position: [INVENTORS SHOWCASE]

The concept of a superturbocharger was most notably used on aircraft during World War II, but it has spent most of its postwar years in mothballs.

Ed VanDyne, president, CEO and CTO of VanDyne SuperTurbo Inc., has revived the concept by migrating it from air to land for use in more efficient automobiles.

"The key to the efficiency game is making engines smaller with the same power as a bigger engine," says VanDyne, touting his SuperTurbo as a 30 percent efficiency boost to the internal combustion status quo.

Two-thirds of this efficiency gain comes from using a smaller engine, and the remaining 10 percent is owed to "a supercharger that's actually made out of a turbocharger," VanDyne says.

Powered by a car's waste heat, the aptly named Super Turbo turns a turbine attached to the crankshaft via its own transmission. The resulting power boost allows the manufacturer to use a four-cylinder instead of a V6, or a V6 instead of a larger V8 without a loss in performance.

VanDyne says his technology does not require retooling and only costs $350 per car if the car company installs it at the factory. He developed the technology with his unnamed former company, a spinoff from MIT and now a part-owner of VanDyne SuperTurbo.

"They didn't want to keep it in-house, so I licensed the technology and went out on my own." he says. And since going out on his own last year, he has landed orders from six major auto manufacturers--none of them American--to buy $100,000...