John Samuel

Sir John Samuel Bt. built and raced GT cars in the 1960s, developed the UK's Enfield 8000 electric passenger car (1970) and headed the Electric Auto Corp. team in Detroit in early hybrid development. Later in 1990, his team won the City of os Angeles Electric Vehicle Initiative and launched the LA301 plug-in hybrid in Tokyo. It inspired the Toyota Prius which became Japan's best-selling car - all before the advent of lithium ion batteries. More recently, he founded Refuel Technology/REDT Energy (now Invinity Energy Systems) which has commercialised the Vanadium Redox flow battery for bulk storage of renewable energy.