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Panasonic's Oxyride vehicle breaks 65mph on AA batteries
Sure, watching a wee remote controlled, all electric vehicle hit nearly 200 miles-per-hour is quite impressive, but moving a vehicle large enough to stuff a moderately sized human into with just AA cells is, well, world record worthy. Reportedly, the newly revamped Oxyride managed to maintain an average speed of just over 65mph and hit a top speed of 75.8mph, all while being powered by 192 AA batteries. Unsurprisingly, the promotional stunt rocketed Panasonic into the Guinness Book of World Records for speed attained with a vehicle solely driven by dry-cell AA batteries, but we still wouldn't look at purchasing 192 batteries (each way) as an efficient method of powering your commuter car.[Via AkihabaraNews]
A battery for gamers? Puh-leeze
Most gamers probably don't give two seconds of thought to the batteries behind their wireless controllers, but that hasn't stopped Panasonic from trying to market their new line of Oxyride Extreme Power batteries as "extreme power for every gamer's needs". A recent public relations entreaty promoting the batteries asks wary gamers to picture a Halo match with friends that suddenly goes awry when "all of sudden the battery in your wireless controller runs out of juice. BANG! Instant kill." Sorry, but with Xbox 360 wireless controllers lasting up to 40 hours on a set of standards AAs, this is far from a major concern for most players. For the paranoid player that's really concerned about a dead-controller kill, there's always the play-and-charge kit, which is more environmentally friendly than disposable batteries and pays for itself after only a few charges. With the PSP, DS and even the PS3 wireless controller all sporting built-in rechargeable batteries, the years of gamers throwing away their power sources are on the way out. Now if Nintendo would only announce some sort of official recharger kit, the Wii remote gamer's dreams of a battery free future might be complete. Until then, there's always the USBCell.
Air Oxyride 100-AA glider takes wing
Panasonic's Oxyride-powered glider took to the air for the first time this weekend, with Panny's blogger declaring only that "it flew temporarily." While this publicity stunt/college engineering project isn't going to revolutionize transportation or aviation (despite Panasonic's tagline that the project is the work of "21st Century Wright Brothers"), we still have to give props to Panny -- and especially the team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The idea of building a manned glider powered by 100 AAs may have sounded impossible, but they managed to pull it off.
Air Oxyride: 100 batteries included
Panasonic has bumped up the power of its Oxyride batteries, claiming the new version is 120% more efficient than the original model. And to prove it, Panny has decided to launch an airplane powered by 100 AA Oxyride batteries (you might recall that the original Oxyride was heralded by a battery-powered ultralight vehicle). No word on how far the plane will be able to go powered on those AAs -- or whether Panny's actually managed to recruit anyone to fly the thing (though we hear Richard Branson is game). We assume that, after this stunt, Panny will roll out next year's upgrade with an Oxyride-powered space shuttle, and follow that one with a battery-powered lunar colony. Maybe after that, they'll consider something really dramatic, like beating disposable lithiums or rechargeable NiMHs in a digicam.
