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Former Employee Accuses Wireless Charging Startup uBeam of Being a Sham (ieee.org)
uBeam, a startup which has raised over $25 million for its transmitter that can charge phones, tablets, and other devices wirelessly, is under attack. Paul Reynolds, former VP of engineering at the company has accused the company of making false promises. Reynolds, who has more than 20 years of experience working on ultrasound devices, says uBeam has overstated its technology's capabilities, and there's no way it can deliver anything close to its claim in a working prototype later this year. In fact, he went all the way to call uBeam "the next Theranos". For the uninitiated, uBeam plans to create a charging station which utilizes sound waves to beam power to devices in the same room. The company, which has a team of more than 30 engineers and physicists, has been working on the product since 2011. Some of its investors include Marc Andreessen, Marissa Mayer, and "Shark" Mark Cuban. From an IEEE report: Physicists have long questioned the practicality of uBeam's plans to deliver electricity to mobile devices using ultrasound. Mark Suster, a prominent venture capitalist and uBeam investor has defended uBeam. IEEE report adds: In his article today, Suster writes that when Reynolds was at uBeam, the engineer gave no indication that he had any problems with the company's direction -- implying that the issues raised in Reynolds' blog were essentially out of the blue. uBeam itself has yet to respond to anything Reynolds has written. "Throughout my time working with him he reassured me we could solve the technical challenges and our approach was viable," Suster writes. But Reynolds told IEEE Spectrum that is simply not the case. He says that he was rarely allowed to communicate directly with Suster, on account of Perry's (Editor's note: Meredith Perry is the Founder and CEO at uBeam) management preferences. But Reynolds said that in two meetings with Suster during the summer of 2015, he voiced concerns about what the company was telling investors and reporters it could do.
Today's startups wouldn't exist if there hadn't been products in the past that seemed impossible at the time but were later able to become reality and make it to the market.
That doesn't mean that every stupid idea is possible.
The idea is not specifically impossible. But there are some basic laws of physics that have to be adhered to that make it 100 percent pointless. The amount of power needed to make an acouctic charging system work is so unlikely to be useful that even if not impossible, it isn't remotely practical. You have to transmit a helluva lot of power to transmit power.
I'm expecting kilowatts to charge phones reliably. Now just imagine a person sitting in a room bombarded with that level of sound. I suspect that without incredible filtering, people would still be blasted by harmonics of the ultrasound. Just the physical effects on us meatbags woulf be pretty scary.
When wealthy people actually think that this is ever going to be a practical system, it sheds light and insight on why there are creationists and denialists in the world.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Ah no.
Physics said no. I believe physics. The idea a stupid on the face. The patents are only worth pennies.
Reality is it will compete with other short distance induction charging models that already have far less problems at much higher energy transfer rates.