MANILA, Philippines — A little over three months ago, googling “Ismael Aviso” would have you come up with a couple of YouTube videos showing a stationary, skeletal-looking car with a running engine fed not with petroleum but with power apparently coming from a box of capacitors and a thick, horizontal antenna that collects and harnesses free-flowing energy.

Now, Ismael Aviso has his own gleaming feature page over free energy concepts-sharing website Pure Energy Systems Wiki (PESWiki) that practically hails the Filipino as the next big thing in green technology.

“When we hear of electric vehicles, we typically envision a trunk full of batteries. Not so with an electric vehicle prototype developed by Filipino inventor, Ismael Aviso. In his small prototype vehicle, one 12-volt battery is all that is needed, because his vehicle is not running from the storage capacity of the battery, but the battery is merely serving as the delivery point for the energy that is being harvested from unseen energy all around us through his special circuitry,” wrote Sterling Allan in Aviso’s PESWiki page.

Aviso, the 54-year-old mineral water business man and electric car inventor from Navotas City, is on his way to becoming a viral presence online, if he isn’t already.

His emergence over the Internet and on the pages of this daily could not have come at a better time for Filipinos, whose one enduring headache has been the high cost of domestic fuel.

Since November, when Aviso was still improving on his design, petroleum prices have climbed by R4 to R5 a liter, depending on fuel product.

“Nations all over the world are making a stake on electricity-powered cars,” Aviso bared. “Pinoy e-car technology is better, cheaper and more efficient. We should not be left out; instead of importing this technology, we must employ this know-how to build our own e-cars and sell it to the world.”

Both the Department of Energy (DoE) and Department of Science and Technology (DoST) have taken notice of his fuel-less car invention, which, when repackaged into a conversion kit, can turn petroleum-guzzling vehicles into electric ones.

The DoST will lead the conduct of a possible road test this month on Aviso’s car, to be witnessed by DoE’s Alternative Fuels and Energy Technology Division.

The spectacled and gray-haired Aviso remains hopeful that a successful test run would lead him to investors and venture capitalists, that is, if the government doesn’t help finance his endeavor.

“The Philippine government can help me gain an easy way to get a huge loan from a bank. From then on I’ll focus on producing conversion kits,” he said, simplifying his plan.

Aviso manages to send a powerful message in one of his YouTube videos wherein he drove around his impoverished town aboard his bare-bones prototype car, providing a first-person view of his neighborhood.

“Here’s the picture of where I’ve been living for the past 35 years, but I’m happy. Most people here have low salaries and cannot afford decent homes or nutritious food.”

“Maybe I can do something to uplift the living condition of my neighborhood once I get the right car manufacturer to mass-produce my conversion kit.” he said, even as the people whom he is referring to seem to ignore his strange-looking car as he passes by.