ene

By Evan Ackerman

Have you ever tried to taste electricity? You can, you know… Go find a 9v battery and stick the contacts on your tongue.* Not pleasant, right? Sony has this problem (and it’s a serious, serious problem) totally licked with an RC car that runs on juice. The tasty kind of juice. You know, from fruits and stuff.

The Tomy Ene pocket RC car has, inside of it, a “bio battery” that can generate electricity from sugar in things like juice or soda. As of two years ago, each cell could output 50 mW of power. For this little car, its speed and endurance depend entirely on what you decide to feed it, and while Sony is promoting Coke products, grape juice apparently works the best.

From what I can tell, Sony’s liquid battery technology uses enzymes to digest glucose, which may mean that they last far longer (and are rechargeable more times) than those incredibly strange Nopopo urine powered batteries, which use magnesium and carbon and only last for about 4 charges. However, when you consider which kind of fluid you’d rather donate to your batteries, Nopopo might come out ahead.

Tomy’s car, with Sony’s battery inside it, is currently in the functional (yay!) prototype stage, you can see a video of it motoring around here.

[ Gigazine ] VIA [ Inhabitots ]

*OhGizmo takes no responsibility for whatever you crazy people might actually do at our suggestion. Try this one at your own risk.

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19 COMMENTS

  2. 'Have you ever tried electricity?' hehehe. this gets me. this is a cool and cutie idea! great invention! uhmm, i wonder what's the next gadget to run on juice *giggles*

  7. It doesn’t surprise me that grape juice works the best because grape juice is BOMB! But seriously.. I think this is a really neat idea. And I will admit, I have tasted batteries when I was a kid.. ick. Might as well have something with dual purposes! :p

  8. It doesn’t surprise me that grape juice works the best because grape juice is BOMB! But seriously.. I think this is a really neat idea. And I will admit, I have tasted batteries when I was a kid.. ick. Might as well have something with dual purposes! :p

  9. Electricity can be easily produced by certain chemical reactions. The citric acid in the juice reacts with copper and produces electricity. The first documented battery was make with a copper anod stuck into a potato. It's a great physics lesson for the kids.
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