Let's face it: every drink, including those that come in half-liter plastic bottles or paper and styrofoam coffee cups, aren't exactly safe and spillproof when placed in a vehicle's cup holder. It's even worse if the recipient doesn't come with a lid or in the form of a thermos flask. But the near future may bring a neat solution to this nuisance - the Maksimatic Cup Holder.
The idea of a Maksim Ghyvoronsky, a young and plucky inventor eager to disrupt the automotive industry with his cup holder design, the innovative device is a crowdfunding project on IndieGoGo. At the time of writing, Maksim raised only $50 (donated by a single funder), but he needs $10,000 in order to start mass-producing the innovative cup holder.
Ghyvoronsky says that he needs the money for buying a 3D printer to manufacture the thing an to hire a plastics engineer designer. To raise those $10k, Maksim says he'll build fully-functional Makismatic Cup Holders at $400 a pop, translating to a 25-example production run.
The 27-year-old inventor from Seattle says that his beverage container moves freely thanks to a joint that's attached to a 360 degree pivoting spherical upper member. He explains this setup can change its angle up to 25 degrees according to the forces generated by the car when braking, accelerating, steering left and right, going over speed bumps, the whole lot.
Maksim declared that his purpose is simple: his invention intends "to stop the spills and save lives with a better cup holder." But there's a drawback to the Maksimatic Cup Holder. The device needs to be integrated in the car's center console, in the area that merges with the transmission tunnel. As such, vehicles with electronic parking brakes pose an integration problem.
"Most e-brakes need to be eliminated when retrofitting these into your vehicle. If you have a van, truck or SUV where the shifter is near the steering wheel and the e-brake is a foot pedal then this is absolutely ideal as far as safety and intrusion is concerned," Maksin explained on the project's IndieGoGo page.
That being said, check out the video demonstration and tell us in a comment if you find the Maksimatic Cup Holder a real solution to the age-old problem of spilling beverages on your passenger's lap.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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