It is rare that I come across a product that I feel warrants
un-solicited praise, but the AntiGravity Battery definitely falls into
that category.
A month or so ago a customer arrived to hire out one of our classic cars and he was carrying with him a smallish zip up black leatherette case. Bigger than an iPhone case but definitely not a man-bag. He had brought it with him in case the car didn't have a cigarette lighter socket to keep his phone topped up.
He said this was an AntiGravity battery and he opened the case. In it was a Lithium Ion battery about 50% bigger than my iPhone 5 and about 4 times as thick, with a whole set of connectors to fit anything from a phone to a laptop, plus a mains plug to charge it. But the most interesting thing for me was a small pair of jump leads as this battery will allegedly start a car.
I thought about this for a couple of weeks and did some research on the InterWeb. I don't normally worry about keeping my phone charged as I take a charging lead and cigar lighter plug with me, but was very interested in the jump start capability. I came across a YouTube video of someone testing one. First it was used to start a motorbike, several times, then on to start a car, or light truck, several times.
Suitably convinced I ordered one which duly arrived and I charged it up. I am not a fan of running down car batteries just for the hell of it, so for a while didn't test it on a car. It was certainly able to charge my phone, has a very bright built-in LED torch which can be set to flash SOS in morse-code if I ever get stuck up a mountain.
Then a couple of weekends ago I had to move a few of our hire cars around, one of which was our Austin Healey 3000 which hadn't been started for about 3 weeks. The Healey turned over slowly a couple of times but didn't fire and the battery clearly wasn't going to do its job. I keep a spare (old) battery in the garage which is always on trickle charge and would normally use this, with a set of normal jump leads, to start a car in such circumstances. This seemed to be the ideal opportunity to test the AntiGravity battery. I connected the leads to the Healey's battery, plugged the connector into the socket on the AntiG battery and turned it on. An LED lit to confirm that polarity was correct.
I then tried to start the car. WOW! This tiny battery spun the Healey over quicker than its normal lead acid battery does, and it started straight away.
An Austin Healey has an old fashioned, heavy cast iron engine, with a long stroke so it normally takes a bit of battery power to get it going. The AntiG battery clearly was more than man enough for the job. When we took our Jaguar E-type off to France on the Euroclassic, organised by the European Classic Touring Club, I packed this along with my other tools, although fortunately we didn't need to use it.
The whole AntiGravity case and contents is smaller than the standard pack of jump leads I take with me, never mind the space and weight of a spare lead-acid car battery. So now rather than carry a pack of jump leads in our classic cars this will go with me safe in the knowledge that it can start a car, power a phone or laptop, or even attract a rescue helicopter.
No wonder companies like Tesla are using Li-Ion batteries instead of lead acid!
A month or so ago a customer arrived to hire out one of our classic cars and he was carrying with him a smallish zip up black leatherette case. Bigger than an iPhone case but definitely not a man-bag. He had brought it with him in case the car didn't have a cigarette lighter socket to keep his phone topped up.
He said this was an AntiGravity battery and he opened the case. In it was a Lithium Ion battery about 50% bigger than my iPhone 5 and about 4 times as thick, with a whole set of connectors to fit anything from a phone to a laptop, plus a mains plug to charge it. But the most interesting thing for me was a small pair of jump leads as this battery will allegedly start a car.
I thought about this for a couple of weeks and did some research on the InterWeb. I don't normally worry about keeping my phone charged as I take a charging lead and cigar lighter plug with me, but was very interested in the jump start capability. I came across a YouTube video of someone testing one. First it was used to start a motorbike, several times, then on to start a car, or light truck, several times.
Suitably convinced I ordered one which duly arrived and I charged it up. I am not a fan of running down car batteries just for the hell of it, so for a while didn't test it on a car. It was certainly able to charge my phone, has a very bright built-in LED torch which can be set to flash SOS in morse-code if I ever get stuck up a mountain.
Then a couple of weekends ago I had to move a few of our hire cars around, one of which was our Austin Healey 3000 which hadn't been started for about 3 weeks. The Healey turned over slowly a couple of times but didn't fire and the battery clearly wasn't going to do its job. I keep a spare (old) battery in the garage which is always on trickle charge and would normally use this, with a set of normal jump leads, to start a car in such circumstances. This seemed to be the ideal opportunity to test the AntiGravity battery. I connected the leads to the Healey's battery, plugged the connector into the socket on the AntiG battery and turned it on. An LED lit to confirm that polarity was correct.
I then tried to start the car. WOW! This tiny battery spun the Healey over quicker than its normal lead acid battery does, and it started straight away.
An Austin Healey has an old fashioned, heavy cast iron engine, with a long stroke so it normally takes a bit of battery power to get it going. The AntiG battery clearly was more than man enough for the job. When we took our Jaguar E-type off to France on the Euroclassic, organised by the European Classic Touring Club, I packed this along with my other tools, although fortunately we didn't need to use it.
The whole AntiGravity case and contents is smaller than the standard pack of jump leads I take with me, never mind the space and weight of a spare lead-acid car battery. So now rather than carry a pack of jump leads in our classic cars this will go with me safe in the knowledge that it can start a car, power a phone or laptop, or even attract a rescue helicopter.
No wonder companies like Tesla are using Li-Ion batteries instead of lead acid!
Tony Merrygold of The Open Road
is an expert in classic car hire having been in business in the UK
since 1997 running The Open Road. Tony runs courses telling people how
to start up a car hire company, having trained over 200 people over the
past ten years.
Combining his 20 year background in sales and marketing with his knowledge of the classic car hire industry, in early 2008 Tony launched a new web portal Classic Car Hire World - listing classic and sports car hire companies around the world. Within three months of its launch this site acheived a Google PageRank of 4/10 and was showing on the first page of Google.com when users searched for 'classic car hire'.
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Tony_Merrygold/117544
Combining his 20 year background in sales and marketing with his knowledge of the classic car hire industry, in early 2008 Tony launched a new web portal Classic Car Hire World - listing classic and sports car hire companies around the world. Within three months of its launch this site acheived a Google PageRank of 4/10 and was showing on the first page of Google.com when users searched for 'classic car hire'.
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