Godfather of the Hybrid

According to TreeHugger, Victor Wouk has passed on.

I wasn't familiar with the name. Caltech, where he attended graduate school, provides more details. This year they hosted the inaugural Victor Wouk Lecture.

A Rich Life

The American Institute of Physics gives some idea of all the things Wouk accomplished.

He picked Caltech, in part, because they had open book exams. During WWII he worked on the separation of uranium isotopes. For the founder of Motorola, Russell Feldman, in the early 1960s he worked on designing a practical electric car. He eventually concluded that a hybrid vehicle would be more practical.

In 1970 the Clean Air Act was passed, following studies which showed the negative effects of smog. Wouk got a federal grant to build a hybrid electric vehicle. He built a Buick Skylark which got 30 mpg and could hit 85 mph. (But it didn't run on water. [1])

The EPA's Eric Stork opposed the hybrid approach. (I wonder why?) Only one car was built by Wouk and his company, Petro-Electric Motors.

Scientific American, Oct. 1997, pg. 71 makes reference to the Skylark.

The rest of his family has done alright, as well. His brother is author Herman Wouk.

[1] From the first season of "That 70's Show".
Hyde: "I heard about a car that runs on water, man."
Fez: "You mean a boat?"