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Fort Collins’ VanDyne SuperTurbo™ Gets $8 Million Venture-capital Boost
February 15, 2012– From The Denver Post
By Mark Jaffe
VanDyne SuperTurbo Inc.™ — a Fort Collins start-up with technology aimed at making auto and truck engines more efficient and more powerful — has received $8 million in venture capital funding.
The financing, led by Northwater Capital, a Toronto-based investment group, will enable VanDyne to perform expensive durability tests, said Tom Waldron, a company spokesman.
VanDyne’s SuperTurbochargers use exhaust waste heat and torque from a motor’s drive train to increase automobile motor efficiency by up to 30 percent.
“It allows for some pretty aggressive downsizing in motors,” Waldron said. “You can get the same power with a two-liter, four-cylinder engine that you’d get with a V-8.”
VanDyne has be working on performance trials with Cummins, the largest U.S. maker of heavy-duty diesel truck engines, the U.S. Army and several other proprietary companies, Waldron said.
But in addition to performance, the company will have to show the durability of its technology to engine makers by running both its gasoline and diesel charges round-the-clock for days.
“A significant amount of run time for several units is not the cheapest undertaking ,” Waldron said.
The SuperTurbocharger technology was spun off into a new company in 2009 from Woodward Inc., the Fort Collins engineering firm that specializes in aerospace and energy sectors, with Ed VanDyne as the chief executive officer.
In the company’s first two venture capital funding rounds it raised $6.5 million, Waldron said.
VanDyne also received a $149,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and a $70,000 U.S. Army grant.