Powermat cordless chargers for GM vehicles

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By Alborz Fallah | January 07th, 2011

Ever heard of Powermats? Available for sale already as standalone devices, the cool little mat works by ‘wirelessly’ charging your gadgets as you place them on top. Pretty nifty stuff. Wouldn’t it be great if your car’s centre console would do the same? General Motors is hoping so.

Having just invested $5 million USD ($5.1 million) into Powermat, the new General is hoping to integrate the technology first in the Volt and in all its platforms over the next few years. The current plan is to have it for the Chevrolet Volt within 18 months.

“Imagine a mat or shelf where you could put your iPhone, your Droid or other personal device and charge it automatically while you commute to work, run errands or as you’re driving on a family vacation, the Chevy Volt will be one of the first applications, but we intend to expand it across our vehicle portfolio.” said Micky Bly, GM’s executive director of electronic systems and hybrids

There are currently some limitations, though. You can’t simply dump your iPhone on the mat and expect it to charge. You’ll need to use a Powermat case (which is reasonable given it acts both as a protective case and as a charger).

The big question is whether or not we can expect to see this sort of technology in everyday Commodores?

“The technology is very exciting and is yet another sign that car development and the digital world are rapidly converging. With Holden being a part of the broader GM family, we’ll be sure to take a look at this for future models and determine whether it can be successfully applied for the local market.” Emma Watts Corporate Communications Manager at Holden told CarAdvice.

Would you like to see a Powermat built in to your Commodore?

Linksy

Sure it sounds like a good idea but does it do anything if you actually touch it?

Also can someone explain how these mats work and are the as quick at charging things as say a normal wall charger
nickdl

I got very excited for a bit there. I thought it might have been a simliar thing but you could put it in your garage and charge your electric car. Better still, you could have it at traffic lights and charge it while driving.

Having read the article I reckon it’s a bit redundant but still quite nifty.
Sam 300TD

I got excited too. I hoped it was a hoverboard.
Tom

Linksy, it works by creating an electromagnetic field. You connect up a receiver to your device, which is basically a flat antenna that sits on the back, and when you place your phone with the receiver onto the mat, it stores the received energy from the electromagnetic field created by the mat. You could lick the mat, even piss on it and nothing would happen, so its safe.

Its extremely old technology, but with the amount of gadgets that people have its becoming popular. The main issue is thats extremely energy inefficient, often less than 50% and it gets worse with distance, which doesn’t matter when you are just recharging an 5Whr iphone battery, but matters a lot when you are trying to charge a 12kWhr car battery.
Tom

Linksy, it works by creating an electromagnetic field. You connect up a receiver to your device, which is basically a flat antenna that sits on the back, and when you place your phone with the receiver onto the mat, it stores the received energy from the electromagnetic field created by the mat. You could lick the mat and nothing would happen, so its safe.

Its extremely old technology, but with the amount of gadgets that people have its becoming popular. The main issue is thats extremely energy inefficient, often less than 50% and it gets worse with distance, which doesn’t matter when you are just recharging an 5Whr iphone battery, but matters a lot when you are trying to charge a 12kWhr car battery.

lu

you seem to know this stuff, do you has any idea how much is this going to cost? i mean in general, say is it possible for average people to afford it?
or do you have to drive a bmw 7 to get it?

thank you in advance

Tom

No it shouldn’t be expensive, its a fairly simple device, should be looking at around the $50 to $80 for the mat, the issue is you need that receiver (usually comes as a skin or cover to the device) which though cheap means you need to get one per device. If you’ve got a lot of different gadgets, then that could add up to a bit, but even then its still well within range of entry level cars.

How much GM will charge for it if its sold as an option, who knows, as much as they can i suspect.

Linksy

Thank you very much for explaining that one.
Could these become more efficient for say charging cars on the road or lights or something?

Tom

Its all to do with the distance from the receiver to the transmitter. If the receiver was mounted to the bottom of the car, and the transmitter was just below the road surface, you wouldn’t lose too much energy but it’d still be inefficient. With the amount of power required for cars even a loss of 10% is a large loss. The powermat works because the device sits on top of the mat, and even then power is lost.

I don’t want to come across as a big downer on this stuff, but at present there are some fundamental problems with it scaling to the sorts of power output required. For what you are suggesting a better way would be to install permanent magnets under the road surface, then a coil on the car would generate an electric current as it drove over it, at the cost of what would feel to the driver to be drag. It’d collect all the nails off the road too.

anthony

ever heard of powermats? <- it seems its kinda an understated given that australians arnt up to date with whats out there in the wider world. give us some credit. our internet may be rubbish but we still have access to the world

that being said..i doubt these will be on commodores any time soon… i mean GM had onStar how many years ago?….when did it arive on the holden floor?

Andrew

Anthony,

It arrived on the Holden floor along with the VT Commodore in the disguise of Holden Ultra Roadside Assist.

anthony

i had it belived ultra roadside assist was just a step up from regular roadside that RACV or others would offer.. still using ur phone to call someone out to your car. as apposed to a linked system to your car itself?

http://proton Stoney!

No ultra is the car telematics bilt into the rear view mirror which does a mirriad of things.

Stoney!

Octavian

Apple AirPlay and this in my next new car please.
gms

I bought one of these with the spesh iPhone case from officeworks for under 40. Big deal general.