Would You Pay To Recharge Your Batteries?

[jeffrey]

Here is a question of the day...would you pay to recharge the batteries of your cell phone? A company in Japan is betting that people will and if they are successful in Japan, you know it will only be a matter of time before you start seeing similar devices in the US

The concept is fairly simple. Battery life for most gadgets such as cell phones and computers isn't long enough to last an entire day. That means that if you use them all day, at some point you are going to have to find someplace to recharge the battery.

The one in Japan charges $1 for 5 minutes of recharging, $2 for 10 minutes and $3 for 20 minutes. It will be interesting to see how successful these battery charging terminals become and if there are enough people willing to pay to have their gadgets ready to use with enough power whenever they want.

[Broken Arrow]

Hmm. Well, I obviously speak only for myself, but when I'm out, I am usually in my car. And that also means that I can charge my cellphone with the car adaptor.

Besides, $1 for 5 minutes seems rather steep (that's paying $12/hour for a machine) and there's no way that I would stand around and wait even 20 minutes for my batteries to charge?

But something tells me this is best suited for metropolitan areas... but if so, that also means a geographically-limited niche market?

Haha, didn't mean to sound so critical. It is a very interesting concept indeed! Thank you for sharing.

[scfr]

I can see it working in a place like Japan where most people don't drive their cars on a typical day; instead they are riding the subway or train and walking or cycling. Those Japanese train stations are good centralized locations for setting up a booth like that. In the US, it might work in large cities with good public transit (such as New York).

What I'd really love to see is a solar-powered cell phone, like the solar-powered calculators that came out about ... what ... 25 or 30 years ago?

[PrincessPerky]

maybe if it was in the tram that I was riding..of course we don't have such newfangled contraptions in this lousy city... (charlotte, not like an old city, nope booming growing, and not a decent tram in site, or plans for one either...)

[Gruntina]

I can't really see it sucessful here as we have electrical outlit pratically everwhere to recharge.

[PRICEPLUS]

I won't pay for what I can get free!