Cellphone fan taxi charging

When we first saw the turbine-like device in the photo to the right we figured we had stumbled across plans to create a fleet of jet-powered taxis and that a pair of retractable wings had to be hidden somewhere about. Unfortunately, on reading the accompanying article it turns out that this is the main part of a wind-powered cellphone charging attachment for taxis that we wrote about on Engadget a while back. Since the company rolling these out, Ecolo 21, boasts a fleet of precisely 20 taxis and will be fitting the wind charger to exactly one for now the environmental impact is set to be, er, limited, but they do plan to roll them out across the fleet in due course.

We'll keep our eyes out for any taxi companies that appear to be going the jet-powered route, of course.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]