Surprise, the reason your ski jacket doesn't have a heater in it is because nobody likes lugging around the car battery required to keep it running. But Aevex has harnessed the stored energy of lithium-polymer batteries, form shaped them to fit snugly inside a glove to deliver 4-6 hours of finger baking. Best of all, the way the textile works, it actually allocates heat only where it's needed in your hand.
The gloves themselves-the $300 Mountain Hardwear Red Savina and the $260 Outdoor Research PrimoVolta-get charged by being plugged into the wall, and are activated by pressing large obvious buttons on the exterior near the wrist.
Inside, the fabric itself is a layering of power, comfort and thermostatic-control panels:
One layer reads the temperature of every part of your hand like a tightly knit grid, and allocates heat where it's coldest. When the finger gets warm, the heater eases off.
Aevex says it'll have the jacket dilemma solved by 2009, and ditto for boots (or at least socks of some kind. Now, if we can all just try and forget about that whole "exploding lithium-ion battery" thing, I think we've got something.
