By Dale Buss, Contributor

Prabhakar Patil is used to taking the battery and running with it.

The company he heads, Compact Power, is one of two suppliers of the lithium-ion batteries General Motors is testing to outfit its hypercritical Volt plug-in hybrid project. But the high-pressure task before him only reminds Patil of a decade ago, when he was Employee One in Ford’s crash initiative to develop the Escape Hybrid.

"At the time, I was manager of electrical and electronics for Ford production vehicles," recalls Patil.

"Alex Trotman was [Ford] CEO, and Toyota had just introduced Prius. I got my assignment in the backseat of a Prius when he and I were being driven around, and [Trotman] said, 'Develop a hybrid for Ford.'"

Patil began immediately to build his Escape Hybrid team. He had a crew of about a half-dozen within a month and the team peaked at an enterprise of about 300 people before Ford introduced the vehicle in 2004 as the first hybrid SUV on the American market.

Patil came to Compact Power, a unit of the Korean chaebol LG Group, in late 2005, again as Employee One of what promised to be an ambitious enterprise to produce a market-leading lithium-ion battery and powertrain for the burgeoning U.S. hybrid market.

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By Dale Buss, Contributor

Warrenville, Ill. – Todd Kimmel's field is business, not technology, but it required his risk-taking entrepreneur's eye to see the possibilities in some college researchers' efforts to make bacteria that can dissolve an old tire.

Kimmel, a 32-year-old venture capitalist searching for investments to make, saw the possibilities of using the technology to make cellulosic ethanol economically feasible.  And he conquered the challenge of pulling together a deal to launch a company to develop and manufacture it, linking the academics with automaking behemoth General Motors Corp.

Now, having gotten startup Coskata Inc. to the crucial doorstep of commercialization, Kimmel is returning to the West Coast to develop other clean-technology investments for the venture-capital firm that backed Coskata in the first place.

"Creating companies is something I am passionate about and enjoy," said Kimmel, whose youthful looks belie an impressive early track record as a venture capitalist.

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