Meet Dr. James Lemke - a serial entrepreneur with a history of founding and leading companies to successful exits and a personal passion for science, engineering and education.

Dr. Lemke founded Achates Power in 2004 with an idea that would revolutionize the automotive industry by revitalizing the opposed-piston, two-stroke engine.

As an influential physicist holding more than 100 patents, Lemke understood that the rapidly increasing shortage of fuel and greater need for emissions reduction meant the world needed a solution. That solution came in a 1930s-era engine architecture that demonstrated great potential, but momentum had dissipated when the tools of the time could not produce an efficient version. Lemke knew the tools and the talent were now available to answer the transportation crisis.

Dr. Lemke started Achates Power with a collection of the brightest engineers and scientists with the condition that ideas and discourse flow unabated and the expectation that each fulfill their utmost potential. While amassing top talent in the industry, Lemke’s vision began to manifest results. However, instead of an engine that only moderately answered the need for efficiency, the Achates Power engine realized a more than 30 percent fuel efficiency improvement compared to the industry’s best diesel engines and nearly double the fuel efficiency of a standard gasoline engine at lower emissions levels and at 10 percent lower cost.

While Lemke always believed in the engine’s viability, now the results have shown the industry the potential economic savings of trillions of dollars per year on fuel and components, and billions of gallons of fuel saved per year.

Please enjoy this biography on Dr. Lemke and the history of Achates Power.