design and build engines to meet each customer’s specifications. Confidentiality agreements preclude the company from identifying Achates customers. About Achates’ customers, Johnson would say only that the company has “more than a handful of partners.”
While Achates was initially focused on diesel-fueled engines, he said the design is “fuel agnostic” and can be adapted for use with natural gas and other fuels. Prospective uses range from unmanned aerial vehicles to stationary power plants, he added.
As a further sign of industry acceptance, Achates named five top automotive and commercial vehicle executives to an industry advisory board. The company says it is also one of six semi-finalists for an “Emerging Innovation Award” to be selected during a national summit on energy security to be held in Washington DC on Oct. 16.
The Series C funding and formation of an industry advisory board will help expand the company’s product development and commercialization efforts.
In addition to the company’s commercial customers, Achates says it also is continuing to work with AVL Powertrain Engineering to develop the next-generation combat engine for the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center. The center, based in Warren, MI, oversees engineering and research for all military vehicles that need engines, from tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles to Humvees and “Class 8” vehicles that move military supplies.
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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