14 DAY TRIAL // Even if I thought so (and I'm pretty sure you have too when you've read the title of this article) this is not even close to funny. Motorola has released a bicycle branded with the company's name that is supposed to be the thing that will impress the people in the emerging markets to buy a cellphone despite the lack of energy sources in their region.
If at first I thought about it as being a complete joke, after more serious pondering on this subject, I've concluded that this yellow bicycle could prove to be a very useful thing in a lot more situations than that described by Ed Zander, Motorola's chief executive officer.
Just think about having to go on a trip in some remote place and forgetting to charge up your mobile phone to the maximum just so it will last for as much days as possible. What is one to do then? Just get its Motorola cellphone charging bicycle and work your legs like a maniac until your phone gets all the juice it needs so you can make that call you're in such a need for.
The thing works with the help of a cradle situated on the handlebars that will hold the handset and, in the meantime, the motion of the pedals should generate the electricity that will go up the wires and recharge the phone's battery.
Ed Zander has said at the CES 2007 that "For people living in emerging markets, energy is a scarcity. In Southeast Asia, rural China and Latin America, we can actually put this in, hook it up and charge this device while we are riding a bike".
Furthermore, on the same subject, Brian Modoff, a Deutsche Bank analyst, has declared that "lower-price phones is where the demand is going be and that's going to put pressure on prices and margins across the handset industry." Also he has said that, for example, "farmers in Senegal use the phone to monitor crop prices. Health workers in South Africa use their phones to locate records while dealing with patients".
In conclusion, I foresee a world where a lot of Chinese people, people that practically rely on the bicycle as their primary mean of transportation, will get to be in the world's energy statistics as an important source of AC power.
And, believe me, that truly is an amazing thing that I haven't thought it could get done very soon and at the same time, even if it sounds as funny as it is, a very practical side of the science world that should have been implemented a long time ago for all of us to benefit from it.