Can you jump start a car using the cigarette lighter socket?
When you jump start a car, the car with the dead battery draws a tremendous amount of amperage from the car with the good battery, which goes straight to the starter motor. In the event that you attempted to run that sort of amperage through your cigarette lighter, no good thing would occur.
The Problem with Cigarette Lighter Jump Starters
The least demanding approach to see the issue with cigarette lighter starters is to take a gander at one and look at the wires that leave it to brilliant jumper cables. A cursory inspection reveals that cables included with a cigarette lighter starter and the wires used in jump starter are designed to handle the different amounts of amperage all at once.
In case you're feeling particularly gutsy, you can likewise look at the distinction between the positive link that interfaces your starter to your battery, which is probably about as thick as your thumb, and the wires that connect to your cigarette lighter, which probably isn't even as thick as a piece of spaghetti.
Another way to look at it is that cigarette lighter circuits are typically fused at 10A or so, and a starter can draw upwards of 350A when it is cranking over. The specific numbers will vary from one application to another, but there is clearly a pretty huge disconnect between the two, and it’s equally clear that you’re never going convey a similar measure of amperage by means of a cigarette lighter bounce starter that you can with great jumper cables.
So What Good Are Cigarette Lighter Jump Starters?
When you hook a dead battery to a good battery, the dead battery act as a load, and it will tend to draw power from the good battery. This isn't as proficient or brisk as really charging it, but some amount of charge can be expected to move from the good battery to the dead one, and this is what cigarette lighter jump start a rely on. Unlike jumper wires, which you connect, maybe wait a minute, and go, cigarette lighter jump starters take time—when they work at all.
If you have one of these devices, and you find yourself absolutely needing to use it, you’re typically going to have to hook it up and walk away for a while. In case you're fortunate, you'll return and find that your battery has enough charge to wrench. On the off chance that you aren't, at that point you'll most likely wish you had recently called a tow truck, or purchased jumper cables, in any case.