Sentimental electrics.
3rd Novemebr 2025
I student enters my shop hoping I can help.
He wants to build a heater system of sorts that allows him to turn on an electric heater inside his mum’s car.
A remote control and an electric heater that can be plugged into the car. This student project will be wonderful as it will solve the bugbear his mum faces; getting into a freezing cold car on a winter’s morning.
I had to let him down gently.
An electric heater in a car will be practically useless. It will drain the car battery fast. It will most likely lead to a situation where a slightly warmer car will not start due to the lack of power left in the battery.
Let’s do the sums. A battery with 100ah capacity can in theory deliver 100 amps at 12 volts for 1 hour. 1200 watts for 1 hour. The heater would need to be 2000 watts, run for ten minutes to heat the inside of the vehicle. That appears to be within the scope of what power is available. However, most car batteries are not high drain. That means that you can only use about 30% of the total capacity before it ‘dies’. Drain it by 40% and you ‘kill’ the battery permanently. Even a 1000w (1KW) heater switched on for five minutes would reduce the chance of getting the car started significantly. Besides, in the winter we use the wipers, the heater, the lights etc more and test the battery enough as it is.
In a petrol/diesel car, the heater is simply a fan that uses perhaps 100w and gets the heat from the engine ‘for free’.
Nice idea, but not one I would recommend investing any time in.
The Baygen wind-up radio.
What a lovely idea. Provide radios to poor people in Africa, radios that do not need relatively expensive batteries.
This idea drew lots of attention. Lots of do-gooders got involved and brought the idea into fruition. It helped that is got a prime-time spot on the BBC Tomorrow’s world programme.
Another sentimental trash project.
The radios worked fairly well. However, they were unbelievably expensive. One could have bought five lifetime’s supply of batteries instead and five cheap radios to boot for less money. They worked quite well until they didn’t. The mechanism was prone to failure.
The business boomed for a while until the novelty wore off. Then the Baygen company went bust and the idea quietly went away. A sentimental fad. Who owns a wind-up device today? Not many of us.
Rebecca Young was 12 when she designed a solar-powered blanket.
She wanted to help homeless people. Keep them warm in winter.
Fantastic. So fantastic that a company made 35 prototypes to test and prove how awful the idea is.
It would need a huge solar panel and best used in the summer when there is less cloud cover.
Ideas are great and to be applauded. However, recognition in major magazines, major news outlets etc is unjust. Why applaud ‘inventions’ that are useless and time wasting? Surely it would be better to applaud those that invent something helpful.
I do applaud the sentiment. The idea of caring for others. Trying to make life better for other people. That is wonderful. Padman with his cheaper sanitary pads springs to mind. I could list lots of people. Squat to pee – invented for women by women. And so on.
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(30th October 2025)