Our Reality Check segment is kind of a catch-all for things that I can poke fun at or which simply interest me. And this week, Chevrolet makes the cut.
For 2016 Chevrolet is rolling out a seemingly simple yet brilliant feature in several models, smartphone cooling for cars which offer the wireless charging pads in their center consoles.
In a car, phones using wireless charging pads can overheat which can actually damage your phone’s battery over time. GM engineers seized upon this reality when extreme weather testing with these new smartphone charging systems.
Basically when summer’s high cabin temperatures combine with the heat of charging and processing, phones can overheat easily and shut down.
So, they simply routed air-conditioning flow directly into the charging pad, flowing cool air under the the phone.
What Chevrolet calls Active Phone Cooling I think is a pretty darn novel approach which really doesn’t cost much at all to offer up, and will be coming to the 2016 Impala, Malibu, Volt and Cruze when optioned with the wireless charging system.
Call me a shill if you want to but when a car company does something cool like this, it deserves to be pointed out. I just hope it flows across the GM family to Cadillac and other nameplates too.
