No Comments yet Add your own

• 1. Car Reviews » Blog &hellip  |  July 27th, 2006 at 7:00 am

  […] I didn t realize plugging a charger into a car s cigarette lighter could actually charge the car s battery - usually it just sends electricity out, right … Continue… […]

• 2. mbd  |  July 30th, 2006 at 1:14 am

  I have doubts that this can actually charge the battery enough to start it, or in a reasonable amount of time.

• 3. Tracey  |  August 2nd, 2006 at 4:09 am

  It’s not supposed to be the equivalent of a jump start, not supposed to recharge a dead battery. It’s supposed to maintain the charge in a live battery, to keep it from getting low enough to die. If it works, it’s probably useful for people who use a lot of cigarette lighter plug-in devices (cell phones, mini TVs, etc.), that can be a significant drain on the car battery, beyond what the batteries were really meant to handle.

• 4. Jon Kennedy  |  August 4th, 2006 at 11:18 pm

  Would be useful if parked at an airport (open carpark of course) or similar, so you don’t have a flat battery when you return.

• 5. yvon lee  |  September 9th, 2006 at 9:30 am

  will it maintain the battery charge for ppl that crank their car stereo and the a/c on while they are driving?
  thanx

• 6. Dick Wayn  |  December 22nd, 2006 at 1:33 pm

  This item doesnt work as promised. Have found that West Marine sells the best ones. Buyer beware

  DW

• 7. Bruce Lee  |  March 19th, 2007 at 1:27 am

  We have a new product for digital camera and digital camcorder’s accessory.It uses solar or AC power to charge and supply power to digital products,such as digital camera,digital video,portable DVD,Sony PSP,ipod,mp4,cell phone etc. Are you interested in our product?We would like to be your supplier.

• 8. Philip Yong  |  April 21st, 2007 at 3:55 am

  I’m country Malaysia, how can I buy this product? I am very interesting on it. Please reply.

• 9. Cheeze  |  May 24th, 2007 at 2:18 am

  No this will not maintain the battery for those who crank car stereos and A/C. The output of this one is rated at 1.8 watts nominally and I would expect much lower in partial or indirect sunlight. By comparison the car’s alternator put out from 65 to 100 watts depending on what the manufacturer specified. This device as someone has mentioned is ONLY for someone who is expected to leave thier car for a long period of time without starting it. It will maintain the charge similar to a trickle charger. It can counteract very small drains put on, by say, an alarm system or keep a poor battery from completely going dead. It will NOT charge a dead battery. If you are having battery problems then you should get a new one, not spend half of the money on this then curse it when you are left stranded.

• 10. mr Pempi  |  July 17th, 2007 at 10:24 am

  when driving, the car’s alternator does the charging of the battery!!
  my unit works just fine and after 3 weeks i can get in and go !
  i got crocodile clamps that can be connected directly to the battery and thus does not charge through the lighter socket. jon kennedy is spot on.

• 11. Gas saving myth: Turn off&hellip  |  August 19th, 2007 at 2:12 pm

  […] cars nowadays like GPS, DVD etc. It does take energy to recharge the battery. I am a big fan of recharging your battery with solar devices. I say have two batteries one for the engine and another for everything else. folks could charge […]

• 12. Gas saving myth: Turn off&hellip  |  August 19th, 2007 at 2:14 pm

  […] in cars today like GPS, DVD etc. It does take energy to recharge the battery. I am a big fan of recharging your battery with solar devices. I say have two batteries one for the engine and another for everything else. People could charge […]

• 13. Gas saving myth: Turn off&hellip  |  August 20th, 2007 at 12:43 am

  […] in cars today like GPS, DVD etc. It does take energy to recharge the battery. I am a big fan of recharging your battery with solar devices. I say have two batteries one for the engine and another for everything else. People could charge […]

• 14. Gavster  |  October 5th, 2007 at 4:29 am

  Unfortunately in the UK we don’t get that much sunlight, or this would only good in the summer, alternatively this USB car charger would be a good bet as I can charge many different devices as it plugs into the car cigarette lighter socket USB Car Charger

• 15. Ian Hemphill  |  November 26th, 2007 at 11:47 am

  I have had an ICP Sunsei Solar 12 V 2 watt solar panel connected to my car battery for a few months. (Take note Gavster:) Under cloudy skies my panel produces 63mA at 13 volts dc, and its maximum output is claimed to be 137mA. At 63mA the panel puts approximately 5.5 amp hours of power into the battery weekly (given an average of 12.5 hours of daylight). This primarily offsets the constant 31mA drain that the car (alarm, etc.,..) puts on the battery while sitting. A car battery also loses power because of auto-discharge, which varies by temperature. These two losses are before you consider recharging the battery or compensating for accessories run from the cigarette lighter. A rough limit of unregulated solar charging for a lead acid battery is 2% of its capacity (which is amp hours, NOT cold cranking amps). 16 watts of solar panels (500 mA to 2 Amp output) would seem to be a prudent limit for a 100 amp hour battery. Anything more and you risk boiling the battery electrolyte away by overcharging on a bright sunny day. Run the calculations for yourself using output figures for panels (both max and realistic), what the normal drain is from the car sitting, and what your battery can take in terms of a constant overcharge. One word of warning: many cars have inactive cigarette lighter circuits when the ignition switch is off. No current will flow to the battery through the cigarette plug when this is the case. Some people use the OBD connection to feed power to the car. I wired my panel directly up to the battery and the panel sits on the rear deck in the rear window.

• 16. Christine Sattler  |  January 16th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

  My neighbor has come to charge his cell phone in my cigarette lighter for three days now. will this drain my car battery?

• 17. Kayla  |  February 19th, 2008 at 5:28 pm

  I am an eighth grader, and my Science teacher gave us a project that basically says we can’t use any of the fossil fuels to……I guess live. The teacher said that we had to use alternate energy sources to live our life. The sources I chose were: solar power, wind power, geothermal power, and biomass. I also had to “buy” a car that also ran on alternate energy sources; a Hybrid. I could not find any site, until I found this one, that would tell me what a solar powered charger was, how it worked, or how much it cost. So thx site for helping me get a good grade on my project!

• 18. Tim Holman  |  March 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm

  Hmmm… I’ve attached a 1.5W solar panel to keep my motorbike battery charged up, and guess what? It’s run (almost) flat… !
  Sunlight in the UK is pretty poor, but I’d have thought even the basic of trickles would have kept it up to notch.
  I suspect the alarm drained it in the end - unfortunately no way of turning this off unless you’re a thief and know how to nick these things.
  Leave it to the power companies to feed the grid with alternative energy - it’s far more efficient for them to do this on a large scale than for households to attempt to contribute by buying their own generators. Think of all the plastic (oil) waste that goes into making solar panels that don’t perform. Most household ones will take 10+ years to pay for themselves…

• 19. Nino  |  March 7th, 2008 at 8:33 am

  Tim, you’d have to check what kind of drain your bike has on it at rest. Either you have a greater drain than the charger put out, a defective charger, OR a battery that was on it’s way out. If the battery is dying (sulfated, damaged internally, etc) no charger will save it’s life.

• 20. bob  |  March 14th, 2008 at 8:40 pm

  Get a fluke or some kind of volt meter you will see that these DO WORK and they do put out voltage, Im running some to 2 deep cycles and it charges enough to run my 70 gallon fish tank, minus the heater.

Leave a Comment

Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>