Citizen Eco-Drive technology derives directly from the main energy source, light!
Special high-absorption solar cells capture solar energy and transform it into kinetic energy, thus powering the movement of the watch.
Citizen was the first company in the world to understand and develop the great potential of energy generated by light, so Citizen is a pioneer in this field, creating Eco-Drive technology, a technology that thanks to time is ahead of the times.
In the 70s there was a large and rapid diffusion of the world of watchmaking thanks to battery-powered models that exploited quartz technology to the detriment of mechanical models.
Although these models are accurate and reliable, they have the limit of a programmed duration due to the residual battery charge, which constitutes a periodic discomfort that Citizen has decided to eliminate.
Citizen’s solution was to use sunlight to generate power.
In 1973 there was a great awareness due to the crude oil crisis, shifting public attention to alternative technologies, hence the clear advantage of solar cells, which at the time were an innovative engineering solution for the benefit of a source much cleaner energy.
Thanks to this assumption, the idea of Citizen was born, exploiting the technology of sunlight to charge their watches by eliminating the battery problem and moving on to what is universally known as an ecological watch.
In the 80s, other companies also began to take their first steps in the production of watches powered by sunlight, but Citizen, for its part, had an advantage equivalent to many years of technological research, always managing to be extremely more efficient.
While the sundials of the other companies had an average charge of about 2 days, the analog solar cell model had an energy reserve greater than four times as much, so much so that its main feature was that it required only one and a half hours of charge to run a whole day.
Thanks to technological advances achieved by solar energy, the Citizen watch not only recharged thanks to the light of our star but was also able to recharge itself from the light produced in an artificial way.
In the 90s, Citizen watches introduced a new technology that worked with the help of an accumulator that made it possible to define a new standard, with an energy reserve that lasted over 6 months.
The exposure of a Citizen Eco-Drive means that thanks to any type of light exposure it can power the watch, making use of a completely innovative technology, managing to function even in total darkness for over 6 months.
Thanks to its continuous technological development, Citizen has succeeded in maximizing not only the duration of its watches but has also managed to maintain that ideal of respect for the environment that distinguishes it, in fact the Eco-Drive technology consumes only 1/ 90,000 of the energy than the most efficient smartwatch.
For Citizen, technology is not an end in itself, it is a tool for making products more beautiful and functional.
