Bright vice chairman and founder John Waters caught the electric car bug in the 1990s when he was an engineer working on GM’s electric EV1 model—a project that made him realize he could “be part of the solution” for smog-choked cities, he recalled in a recent interview. “That’s what made it so crushing,” he said, when automakers started pulling out of the electric vehicle game.

Waters, however, stayed in. He eventually joined the Rocky Mountain Institute, or RMI, a Colorado think tank (Editor’s Note: Amory Lovins, chair of RMI is an advisor to National Geographic’s Great Energy Challenge initiative.)

Helping corporations like Alcoa and Johnson Controls craft strategies for alternative fuel vehicles, he became known among some