Originally published at: The SuperCap 2 is the vehicle jump starter that absolutely never fails | Boing Boing
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draws on the remains of your weak battery to fire up the necessary voltage to spark that battery back to life.
But if there are no ‘remains’ it probably won’t work. As I discovered recently (albeit with a battery-based jump starter). Then, you just have to connect one of these:
Which has been a lifesaver in a pandemic when one car hasn’t been driven for months and the other does such short journeys the battery is never properly recharged. I’ve had to take to ‘joyriding’ now - just driving for the sake of it.
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“Absolutely never fails?” Jump this!
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I like the idea of going full-circle with car starting technology and adding a manual hand-crank for such situations.
My family once owned an early model VW microbus that included an emergency hand crank that could be used to start the engine when the battery was dead. I always thought that was a cool option to have. Of course, it’s probably better to focus on improving the overall reliability of a vehicle and its battery so that the need for emergency starting is rare.
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1% to 5% self discharge per day sounds super high (it is way way higher than the Bolt EV for example), but his comment about tif he left a gas car in the airport for a year it would have the same amount off gas is untrue. Gas has some significant evaporation of time, and some of the fuel economy savings in the last decade+ has been sealing the fuel tank and fuel system better to prevent evaporation.
Also a gas car after being left for a year could have significant problems starting, although the more likely one would be the starter battery.
To be honest I really thought this was going to be a video about a Tesla owner with a dead 12V battery, which is used to power things like the center display, and most (or all) the lights, and basically anything that you would find in a normal car because it is easier to buy those off the shelf…and once you have done that you have 12V or 14V wired all over the car even if you make some custom stuff it is easier if it too uses 12V/14V unless it really needs the 400V or whatever the main battery has. So Teslas (and most, or even all other EVs) have an entire 12/14V system. Some of them are smarter about it then others. Some just charge the 12V when the main system is also running. Others will monitor the state of the 12V and recharge it from the main system if the 12V is low and the main system isn’t.
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The operation of the supercapacitor jumpstarters is very interesting; I would far prefer to leave one of those in my car in the heat for an extended period than current lithium-based packs. Youtube tests of jumpstart devices are usually pretty enthusiastic, and the ones for this thing are no exception, but I’m waiting for someone more skeptical (like project farm) to compare it to other starters.
I have a ctek charger like that one, if the battery is dead enough it won’t work either. I have to throw some charge into the battery with a dumb charger then switch to the ctek.
Well I had an odd experience with my totally dead battery. (I say totally dead but I did not check the lights - it was just utterly silent when trying to turn the engine over.) CTEK worked at first but took a long time to get beyond 1st step - seemed stuck there. Tried lithium based battery jump starter - absolutely nothing ( those things are great with a recently drained battery that is only just failing to turn the engine over, but otherwise not). Reconnected CTEK - absolutely nothing. Figured battery may truly be dead. Removed battery from car. Connected CTEK again just to check - and off it went. Hurrah! Several hours later I had a charged battery ready to put back in the car and avoided a £100 new battery expense.
Had not come across a supercapacitor thingy before - all news to me. Must investigate.
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