Author: Howard Lovy

Howard Lovy wrote:

Auto parts manufacturer Delphi has a simple description of what it’s been up to during these past four years of bankruptcy reorganization. “We’ve been quiet, but we’ve been busy,” says Jeffrey Owens, president of Delphi’s electronics and safety division.

The recent Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) World Congress in Detroit was a kind of coming-out party for Delphi, which emerged from Chapter 11 in October 2009, and Delphi representatives were eager to show the industry and media what exactly they’ve been busy with.

The new mantra for the Troy, MI-based automotive parts manufacturer, which was spun out of General Motors in 1997, is “green, safe and connected.” But it looks as though “connected” has been its main focus—connected to where consumer products meet the automobile, and to where the nascent electric vehicle market meets the home and the electric grid.

First, the connection to the home. The apparent rise of the plug-in electric vehicle opens up “new product and market opportunities for those with the skill and foresight to pursue them,” Owens said during an SAE panel discussion that posed a kind of chicken-or-egg-style question: “Does the smart grid enable electric vehicles, or the other way around?” The answer, in Owens’ view, is that it does not matter—each can take advantage of the other. A vehicle plugged into any future smart grid can help with home energy management through smart chargers that can both provide cars with the juice they need  and give back to the home and to the grid.

But, Owens said in an interview later with Xconomy, that there is no need to wait for the “smart grid” to arrive to take advantage of the commercial opportunities. Delphi can be an enabler for electric vehicles by providing the hardware needed to make connections today.

“We don’t do batteries … and we don’t do rotating machines,” Owens says. “But all of those variants require different types of electronics that have never been in the car before. So, that’s what we do and we’ve got 20 years of experience working on just that.”

Remember General Motors’ first (failed) experiment with electric vehicles, the EV1? Delphi, in partnership with Hughes Electronics, was instrumental in putting it together. But just because the EV1 failed doesn’t mean the knowledge gained from its development went out the window.

“We fortunately kept those folks engaged and working on future generations,” Owens says.

So, while other automotive suppliers are jumping into what will be a highly competitive race to …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Howard Lovy wrote:

When I last met Ann Marie Sastry, she was shivering in the cold, leaky basement of Detroit’s Cobo Hall at January’s auto show, talking about how her company, Ann Arbor, MI-based automotive lithium-ion battery developer Sakti3, was eventually going to power the cars upstairs on the main show’s “Electric Avenue.” Now her company is closer to ascending that escalator with a new $7 million Series B round of financing.

The money comes from new investor Beringea, based in Farmington Hills, MI, and previous investor Khosla Ventures. The Beringea investment was made through the $175 million InvestMichigan Growth Capital fund, which provides expansion capital to promising Michigan businesses.

Previously, the company received $3 million from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation in 2009 following an initial $2 million in financing from Khosla Ventures in 2008.

Sastry, the company’s CEO and a University of Michigan engineering professor, told me recently that although she likes to stay low-key about her company, this investment is exciting because it allows Sakti3 to work toward its goal of hiring 112 more people in the next few years and getting prototypes to customers by the end of this year.

Sakti3 has been a kind of poster child for state incentives. In 2008, the company received tax credits from the Michigan Economic Growth Authority worth $2.3 million over 10 years, helping to convince the company to stay in Michigan rather than move to a competing site in California.

“They’ve been amazing to us,” Sastry says, referring to the state government’s efforts to support Michigan’s nascent battery industry. “The state’s made a really substantial commitment to us. We take that really seriously. We want to scale in Michigan and the state has really stepped up.”

But, Sastry says, mostly she and her colleagues at Sakti3 keep their heads down, work on their technology and learn more about the nuts and bolts of the business, like automotive supply chain issues. Lithium-ion battery cells for the automotive space is a hot, highly competitive field now and Sastry prefers to keep the press releases at a minimum, as you can see by the company’s very minimalist Web site.

Of investors Beringea and Khosla, she says that she is thrilled that they share her philosophy about the future of vehicle electrification.

“We really believe that the way to solve a lot of these sticky societal problems is with good technology,” Sastry says.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Howard Lovy wrote:

Welcome to Xconomy Detroit, a continuing chronicle of what this city is “becoming.”

The word “Detroit” has always been immersed in meaning far beyond the physical borders of this great and tragic city. At one time, there was no need to define what one meant by the phrase “coming out of Detroit.” It was synonymous with the very best of American ingenuity and progress. Time passes, and the D-word is almost an epithet.

Here’s what I think: “Detroit” is a verb.

It is constantly in the process of doing, of becoming, of moving from one state of being to another. This is true despite what you may hear or read about Detroit’s historic complacency as a one-industry town.

I have lived in Michigan most of my life. I know that Detroit is always seeking to become—even within the confines of its now-maligned “one industry.” There is a great deal of “becoming” contained within the knowledge, talent, creativity, and sheer willpower of the late, great automotive industry.

Even back in the mid-’80s, when I went to school at Wayne State University in Detroit, there was talk of renaissance, a common buzzword in Detroit. But it has taken just about my entire adult life for me to actually see the seeds of true renaissance.

A few weeks ago, I went back to my old Wayne State campus—where my father before me attended, as well—and was impressed by the bustle over at TechTown, a business incubator that has seen unbelievable growth just in the past year. I saw young go-go business types walking with bookish-looking scientists as they toured their new digs together. With 160 tenants, TechTown is full. TechTown Two is just being launched inside, appropriately enough, a shut-down old Cadillac dealership.

There is a hunger here. It comes out of necessity, certainly, as many talented people find themselves out of work, forced to become instant entrepreneurs. Hobbies become livelihoods. Long-held ideas are taken out of drawers and, thanks to incubators like TechTown, have a chance to breathe.

But TechTown is only the beginning of a new narrative for Detroit. And when I say “Detroit,” I am also talking about Southeastern Michigan, including Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, which is placing more emphasis these days on spinning out companies and partnering with industry. University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman has a variation on an old academic mantra. At U-M, it’s “partner or perish” as the university aggressively pursues business relationships to turn academic ideas into business realities.

Lawrence Molnar, director of U-M’s Economic Development Administration University Center, recently told a congressional panel that universities are playing a key role in turning local economies around.

It is pretty to say, this idea of a turnaround, but it is hard to convey just how enormous the task is. Michigan lost about 80,000 manufacturing jobs just in the last year alone. Unemployment is the highest …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share: