For more than one hundred years, a war has been waged. You may have never heard of its name, but you have almost undoubtedly been an unwitting participant. The war began in the United States but has since spread across the globe, with billions of dollars at stake. 

We’re talking about the Cola wars. 

While this war has primarily been fought through advertising, with the occasional failed attempt at corporate espionage, innovation has also played a role. When you’re in a head-to-head battle for market share, you need to differentiate yourself from your competition.

A while back, a major soda company hired us to help them innovate. They laid out all of their problems, and we picked four to work on. The following is a short case study on our favorite of those four solutions, even though it ended up not going into production.

The Problem: Hot Soda

Few things are as refreshing as an ice-cold soda on a hot day. Here in the United States, it’s a luxury we take for granted. You go to a convenience store, and you grab a cold soda from the fridge or the fountain machine. It’s that easy. 

Elsewhere in the world, though, it can be a different story. Especially in developing countries, there often aren’t convenience stores (not the way we think of them). Electricity can be expensive and unreliable, and refrigeration systems are often more limited, as is access to ice. 

Because of this, in several countries, the primary way soda is sold is by bicycle cart vendors. Those countries also happen to be among the hottest in the world. Even using coolers, the vendors struggle to keep the soda cold.

So this was our mission: figure out how to keep a chest of soda cans cool in 110-degree heat.

The Solution: An A/C Mobile Soda Cart

We had some clear specifications to work under. The solution needed to fit on a bicycle and be light enough for the vendor to pedal it around. Since the solution would be mobile, it needed to be self-powered. We had a target temperature range for the soda.

One of the first things we did was bring in an air conditioning expert to design the pumps and heat exchanges. After that, we faced a series of fascinating challenges.

First, we worked on the problem of how the solution would be powered. Solar panels were the obvious choice, particularly since the carts would be used in sunny climates. However, solar panels simply did not generate enough power for the initial cooling of the sodas. So we designed the chest so that it could be plugged into an electrical source. The sodas could then be cooled overnight to the appropriate temperature, and the solar panels were used to maintain that temperature throughout the day. 

Another problem was air flow. If you’ve ever sat under a draft and been cold while the person across from you was perfectly comfortable, you understand the importance of air flow. We needed to figure out how to manage the flow of cold air so that all the cans in the chest would be cooled. After running a lot of computational fluid dynamics on air flow, we figured out a solution for that too.

Then we turned our attention to the matter of insulation. Part of this involved research into which materials to use (we ultimately opted for a foam and fiberglass setup). The greater part was figuring out how to keep the cold air in while getting cans out. When you’re trying to isolate cold from hot, you have to use vestibules. If you look at houses in either very hot or very cold climates (assuming they’ve been designed well), you’ll find that the front door does not lead directly into the house. There’s a small space, or vestibule, that functions as an air lock of sorts. This way, when you open the door, you don’t get a blast of cold or hot air going directly into the living space. We applied a similar principle to the dispenser component of the chest.

Through a process of research and iteration, we designed a compact, lightweight, mobile cooling unit that could keep sodas cold all day in scorching heat.

Lessons Learned: The Power of the Pivot and Politics

We had two big takeaways from this project.

The first lesson was that solutions often require a mix of techniques to get the job done, and you must be prepared to pivot. Originally, we planned to use solar panels exclusively. If we’d gotten hung up on that idea, we never would have found a solution, because, at that time, it was simply impossible for solar panels to do what we needed. 

The other big lesson was that corporate politics play a huge role in which innovations see the light of day. As we worked on this project, the team we were working with at the soda company began to fracture. One after another, key team members, many of them brilliant R&D folks with PhDs, disappeared. The group we were working with was based in Texas, and the company was moving all “innovation” back to its headquarters. Many of the people we worked with left the company entirely, including the boss who was the real driving force behind the project. 

So we weren’t surprised when the mobile cart was not put into production. When people start disappearing, you can see the writing on the wall. Still, it’s a shame, because we are proud of the cart we designed. 

Perhaps this is simply another lesson: When you fight in the Cola wars, be prepared for casualties!

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