He talks almost as rapidly as his battery-powered ’96 Saturn scoots up and down Calgary’s Crowchild Trail. The fully insured, fully registered Frankenstein easily reached 80-plus kilometres an hour on the trail the other day.

“This thing’ll go 140,” whispered 50-year-old Ken Norwick, who drives the unit to and from work each day.

Motor-mouthed and kinetic, an irresistibly enthusiastic live wire, Norwick has patched together what he calls the first street-legal, battery-jacked car to roll down Alberta thoroughfares since the 1920s.

“Finally, somebody found a use for a Saturn,” drawled Dave MacKillop of Calgary Technologies Inc., Norwick’s landlord and sponsor.

Shannon Oatway, Business Edge
Ken Norwick's energy has lead him through several careers.

No gas engine. No mufflers, no noise, no rad, no oil, no spills, no smog. This hopped-up buggy’s a revelation. Should make you a bundle, right, Ken?

“Oh, no, that’s just tinkering in the garage,” protested Norwick, whose company, Apps On The Web, is primed to market his REAL life’s work, a software program he developed known as TollGate.

According to the Apps On The Web site: “(TollGate) enables organizations to efficiently, effectively and securely manage and report on users, applications, authentication, authorization and deployment of software from clustered servers.”

Such relentless Newspeak may not be readily intelligible to the humanoid in the street. Fortunately, Norwick is multilingual, thoroughly conversant in carspeak as well. So if you’re in the mood for a point-by-point breakdown of the Saturn hybrid’s mechanical workings, he’ll happily launch into a 15-minute spiel.

After that, the tireless tinkerer will barely pause before dragging out photos of other recent projects, such as the manual flushing toilet he built for the family dog.

Then there’s the fully functional doggie trailer, fashioned from light metal tubing, which allows the Norwicks to tow her behind them on bike rides.“I just strap her in. I made a spring-loaded mechanism so it’s shock absorbed, with air-filled tires, so it’s very nice for her,” he grinned.

Norwick has been fascinated by alternative energy sources since he emerged from short pants. During his student days at Carleton University, Norwick’s dorm room was littered with cacti, small trees and innumerable model windmills. A few of his experimental prototypes even found their way into the National Science Museum.

Since then, his enormous energy and bewildering assortment of talents have led him through several corporate careers, most of which went against his creative grain.

“I don’t like structure, unless its my structure,” he said, shrugging.

As if he didn’t have enough to do – i.e refining TollGate, and helping to build a company – Norwick got antsy last winter, and revived his interest in matters ecological. He rolled the Saturn into his garage, then wired, soldered, hammered and fiddled after supper.

Total cost to the Norwick family: $30,000.

Ultimate goal: To help promote the use of non-polluting electrical vehicles, in the back yard of the Canadian oilpatch.

Literary parallels: How about Don Quixote?

But there’s more to this hopped-up technophile, who just might qualify as the king of the multi-taskers.

As chief technology officer and the creative force behind Apps On The Web, Norwick has already been widely applauded for his Youth in Technology initiative, which has attracted a long list of brilliant students into his computer labs for on-the-job training. It’s a mutually rewarding initiative that invites gifted youngsters into the lab. There, the kids are taught not only to program, but to build, their own computers.

“Very advanced stuff,” Norwick understated.

Currently, four young people are learning under Norwick’s wing. Upon graduation, they’re likely to receive an offer from him to join his staff as salaried researchers and programmers.

Now employing about 25 staff, Apps On The Web has brought Norwick’s wife on board to take care of the books, while he flies off in more creative directions.

Anne Hindley-Norwick brings an MBA, 16 years of experience with the TD Bank, and a bemused tolerance of her husband’s quirky charm to the post.

After three-plus years of research, the company was recently awarded a $500,000 repayable grant from the National Research Council. Apps On The Web is already getting feelers from potential corporate clients, and hopes to start scratching revenue figures into company ledgers within a few months.

But Norwick’s got one more short-term goal. He’s looking for a sign which reads: No parking. Electrical vehicles only.