General Motors, a US-based car maker, has made its first investment from its $100m corporate venturing fund launched earlier in the year, by backing hybrid van maker Bright Automotive.
General Motors Ventures will invest $5m for a minority stake in Bright as part of a strategic relationship between the firms.
GM joins corporate venturing peer Duke Investments, part of US power provider Duke Energy, in backing Bright.
Duke was one of 10 investors that provided $16.2m to Bright in April last year, according to a US regulatory filing.
Keith Trent, president of commercial businesses at Duke Energy, and Mark Huang, formerly senior vice president at GE Energy and now a co-founder of venture capital firm Novus Energy Partners, were also in the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, along with Bright’s executive chairman Reuben Munger and vice chairman John Waters. huang said he had been representing Novus in the Bright investment round.
Munger replaced Waters as chief executive in April in order to find a strategic partner. Waters had previously worked on GM’s first all-electric vehicle, the EV1, launched in 1999. Bright is building a hybrid electric and fossil fuel-powered commercial van and Duke, along with Florida energy supplier FPL Group, said they would invest $600m in converting nearly 10,000 road vehicles in their fleets to electric power by 2020.
Jon Lauckner, president of GM Ventures and who was an influential executive in pushing through the company’s hybrid successor, the Chevy Volt, said: "Our funding of Bright Automotive will accelerate the introduction of advanced propulsion and light-weight technologies in the commercial vehicle market."
Bright was started at the Rocky Mountain Institute, and its plug-in hybrid vehicle research was seeded by aluminium maker Alcoa, Duke Energy, search engine group Google’s foundation, industrial company Johnson Control and the Turner Foundation.