General Motors is not only an investor in wireless charging startup Powermat, it will also be its exclusive automotive customer for a year. GM Ventures, the Detroit automaker’s venture capital arm, has invested $5 million in Powermat to help push the Commerce Township, MI-based company’s products into GM cars, including the gas-electric hybrid Chevy Volt.
Reuters reports that a separate multiyear, multimillion-dollar deal with Powermat gives GM exclusive rights to place the company’s portable-device charging stations in its vehicles for a year. GM Ventures President Jon Lauckner says the device will begin in high-end models and be made available in the next 18 months.
GM Ventures, formed last year, has also invested in Indiana-based electric car startup Bright Automotive and Ann Arbor-based battery developer Sakti3.
Author: Howard Lovy
Howard Lovy is a veteran journalist who has focused primarily on technology, science and innovation during the past decade.
In 2001, he helped launch Small Times Magazine, a nanotech publication based in Ann Arbor, MI, where he built the freelance team and worked closely with writers to set the tone and style for an emerging sector that had never before been covered from a business perspective. Lovy's work at Small Times, and on one of the first nanotechnology-themed blogs, helped him earn a reputation for making complex subjects understandable, interesting, and even entertaining for a broad audience. It also earned him the 2004 Prize in Communication from the Foresight Institute, a nanotech think tank.
In his freelance work, Lovy covers nanotechnology in addition to technological innovation in Michigan with an emphasis on efforts to survive and retool in the state's post-automotive age. Lovy's work has appeared in many publications, including Wired News, Salon.com, the Wall Street Journal, The Detroit News, The Scientist, the Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report, Michigan Messenger, and the Ann Arbor Chronicle.
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