We take a look at alternative ways to charging up gadgets on the run. Photo Gallery
Upmarket cars from a couple of decades ago used to have a separate cigarette lighter and ashtray for just about every seat.
A great idea in the days when smoking was still a style statement. And while smoking is now frowned on, the lighter fitter is still an absolutely crucial idea these days, when the current mandatory fashion statements all need to be powered up. Mobile phones, music players, portable DVD players … they all compete for attention from what can be the lone DC outlet in most cars. Toss in a handheld satnav and you’re really in trouble.
The solution? Alternative ways to charge up while you’re on the move. Sure, you can get little gadgets that you fill with normal batteries, and then your phone sucks the charge out of them. But using batteries to charge a battery seems frankly unimaginative when there are other novel ways to do the job.
Several companies keeping an eye on emerging markets have launched phones that can be charged on a bicycle. They’re probably a hot seller in China where you have 500 million cycle commuters — and 5 million new mobile accounts every month – but a bit difficult to use in any vehicle smaller than a delivery van.
However, there are several little hand-crank chargers on the market. Looking like something between a fishing reel and a pencil sharpener, the idea is that you grind it furiously for a few minutes before you make each call. Marvellous notion, perfect for remote areas, and all very green and environmentally sound.
The only problem is that they don’t work very well if your phone battery is already flat. And if you depend on the hand-crank to keep it charged, it’s going to be dead flat. All the time.
We spun the handle into a blur and still didn’t get enough charge to do more than send a brief SMS.
And all that winding-up was a bit boring, too. Which is why we’re very keen on the idea of Orange’s prototype charger – recently tested at Britain’s Glastonbury festival – that powers your phone (or music player) by capturing the kinetic energy of your dancing.
You strap the DanceCharge on and boogie away, a system of weights and magnets generates an electrical current to charge you up.
Given that Glastonbury is fairly well-known for consumption of the kinds of ingestible substances that demand frenzied dancing at even the sound of a tinny ringtone, this gadget could effectively turn you into a perpetual motion machine.
But a bit difficult to use behind the wheel of car, did we hear you say? Well, not if you judge by the amount of people who drive while phoning, texting, eating, drinking and grooming. Often all at the same time. Bopping around to the banal doof of choice should be a snap.
However, the DanceCharge has meant Orange dropping their previous prototype – the WindCharge. Which looks like a larger version of those natty little personal fans, except that it’s your own personal wind farm.
The plan was that people would wave it around and catch enough breeze to charge their phones. Sadly, like the hand-crankers, it didn’t work very well unless you were in cyclonic conditions.
So no good as a hand-held. But we’re puzzled that Orange didn’t try mounting it on a car. Zoom along with the slipstream whirring the blades into a frenzy and surely that would be enough to power every device in the car.
Or wait! Maybe it could even power the car itself. Have we brilliantly hit upon the ultimate perpetual motion machine, and saved the world from the menace of fossil fuels at the same time?
Oh… okay… law of diminishing returns and other killjoy physics theories, huh? Ah well, back to the drawing board. Looks like we have to remain battery hens.
