Charles Kettering was a legendary engineer in the early years of General Motors who created innovations like the electric self starter, all-electric lighting and many other innovations. Kettering had over 140 patents to his name and that was back when patents actually meant something. He started the Dayton Electrical Laboratory Company that eventually became Delco and major part of GM. After joining GM, Kettering led their research labs for many years.

In 1976 GM started awarding their annual Kettering awards to engineers and scientists within the company to honor the top technical innovations of the previous year. This year two of the awards go to teams that worked on GM's new belt-alternator-starter mild hybrid system as used on the Saturn Vue and Aura hybrids. One of the awards is for the belt tensioner design for the system. The tensioner is critical to making the system work reliably for recapturing energy during regenerative braking and also restarting the engine. The other award goes to the team that developed the transition control for stops and starts to make it as smooth as possible.

[Source: General Motors]