Your car needs a power-up

We’ve all gotten used to the12-volt “cigarette lighter” power ports in our cars. If you’ve seen a car built before 1995, you may even have seen one with an actual cigarette lighter, instead of just the little cap over the top. They’re still in our cars because we’ve come to need them to charge our cel phones, iPods, GPS devices, radar/laser detectors, portable DVD players, and all the electronics we tote around with us these days. Most new cars have more than one; our van has three, two in the front, and one in the back.

I’ve noticed that a lot of cars are also packing built-in power inverters and standard household power plugs, so you don’t have to use the 12-volt plugs, or a separate inverter. That’s pretty handy. I hope that gains in popularity.

But my beef (for today) is with the form factor of the 12-volt plugs. Since fewer and fewer of us are smoking in cars these days, can we come up with a different kind of plug, less bulky and cumbersome than the old kinds? Why not use the EmPower ports, the ones found on some airplanes these days? The adapter kits are already out there for portable devices, so it’s just a matter of auto makers starting to make the change.

I guess I’m just bugged by the bulkiness of the ports. If they were half the size, you could put twice the number of them into the dashboards and consoles of most cars. Considering that I’ve occasionally had to shuffle around with plugs, when my wife needs to charge her phone at the same time that I’ve got my GPS unit and iPod cradle plugged in. Yes, I know I can get a splitter, but that just adds to the jumble of cables in the front of the car.

Does this make sense to anyone else? Are there technical hurdles to work through, in addition to the long-term logistical work of changing something the American (and probably world-wide) car-buying public has gotten used to?