"Compared to other people, it was at the very top materially," he said. "We lived fine. But you have ambitions."
By the late 1970s, food was growing scarce. "I had to go increasingly more frequently to Moscow and Kiev just to buy food," he recalled.
He and his wife applied for exit visas to emigrate to Israel, though they intended to get to the United States. It was not a casual decision. A great-grandfather had left czarist Russia for New York, only to return, appalled by conditions in the city's sweatshops.
"Life in Russia was easier," Severinsky said.
However, other family members had prospered. So, in the Lenin State Library in Moscow, he researched where he could settle in the United States, how much he could earn and what it would cost. He even filled out an IRS 1040 form to estimate his taxes.
"I'm very meticulous in what I do," he explained.
In 1978, Severinsky, 34, his wife (a physician), son and mother-in-law flew to Vienna, Austria, and then to Dallas, where a Jewish group sponsored their resettlement.
He landed an engineering job in the oil industry. His interest in a more efficient automobile began a year later in that suburban Dallas gas line. Experimenting on the freeway in his 1976 Cutlass, Severinsky concluded that its engine was most inefficient at low speeds. It was sized for acceleration and high speeds. He searched in vain for a combination of battery elements that would give an all-electric car the speed and range that consumers expect. Golf carts, perhaps, but not cars.
"It was not physically possible," he said.
He thought a powerful electric motor could provide the brief power surges needed for acceleration and serve for low power and slow speeds. A small gasoline engine could handle highway cruising and battery recharging. It was a promising idea, but one that had been kicked around since at least 1902. Severinsky knew he needed to learn more about power electronics, the technology that converts battery voltage into the power to drive electric motors.
So he changed jobs. He picked up skills in the computer controls that he would need to manage power from a hybrid's gas engine and electric motor, and then learned power electronics. Moving to Maryland in 1986, he became an expert in the "uninterruptible power supply" systems that keep big computers running during power failures. With help from the University of Maryland's Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) incubator, he started his own company.
