Solving the in-car power problem Every single car in the UK suffers from a fundamental design flaw that is a hangover from the 1950s irrespective of specification or age: the cigarette lighter. These days it is unlikely to be used to spark-up in transit and is more likely to be used as a means of tapping into a vehicle’s power supply.

As a means of delivering power to consumer appliances it is potentially lethal. The coil in a cigarette lighter needs a steady 15 to 20A at 12V for up to 30 seconds to get hot enough to ignite a cigarette. That’s a lot of power: up to 240W in fact. You’d better be sure that anything you plug into the socket has its own supply fuse.

There’s a second issue: the design and form of a cigarette lighter plug and socket isn’t fit for purpose. The chunky plug vibrates in the socket and if the plug isn’t spring loaded inevitably comes lose. There’s typical only one socket which means despite the relatively high power output it’s only possible to power one device at a time.

The Waddington household has a growing line-up of gadgets fighting to make use of the power supplied by the in-car cigarette light.

• 12V/240V Inverter (for camping trips)
• Digital camera charger
• Headrest DVD player
• iPod charger
• Mobile phone charger
• Nintendo DS
• Sat Nav
• Torch

Stuart Bruce wrote about this issue back in January 2007.

I may have found a solution. Maplin is selling an adapter that plugs into a cigarette socket and converts it into two regular 12V cigarette sockets and – perhaps more usefully – two USB sockets powered at the standard 5V. Any device that can be recharged via a USB socket can be powered up in-car without the need for adapters.

It’s not a complete solution but a series of USB sockets on a car dashboard would be damn site more useful for charging digital appliances than the now 50-year old cigarette socket.   Permalink |