see another thing thats convienient and makes an excuse not to interact with your fellow man...where do I sign up?

I could see recharging or trickle-charging a dead car battery through the lighter socket... but wouldn't the cold-cranking demand of the starter exceed the fuse current rating and blow the fuse...? What am I missing here...

These things are making us real men obsolete. There's few things better than popping your trunk and pulling out a pair of well worn manly jumpers to help a stranded motorist. This thing looks so dainty. I will get one for my girlfriend though. Safety first.

Charles, my first thought would be that starting a car through the 14 gauge wires in the cigarette lighter would set the dashboard on fire like DeNiro's Eldorado in "Casino" before the fuse even got around to blowing.

@charles_barrett: I was thinking the same thing. Also, at first thought the gauge of wiring running through that section of the system, also wouldnt effectively send the amperage. Possibly causing more trouble.

@yellofury: fellow man is an avoidable annoyance, DUH!

@thatguy01: ditto apparently!

How long before someone thinks to build this into a cellphone?

In the picture, it's under three square inches. How many cubic inches is it in real life? (Hoping that typo came straight from JC Whitney...)

I've seen items like this before that connect lighter to lighter, so there does seem to be some precedent for this working, however, jumper cables are much more manly. "Here, let me do that for ya', babe."

But wait! There's more!
There's always more with "Made for TV" -- what else do I get? An ice scraper/snow brush? A never-fail miniature flashlight for my keychain? Little snow cleats for my shoes? Come on, they're holding out on us.

Hmmm. the JCW page says it'll start you car in 10 minutes or less, so maybe it's more of a burbling-brook charger, instead of a trickle charger?

I've noticed people have stopped calling it the "cigarette lighter"

I don't know if this is due to a growing societal aversion to smoking, or simply because a lot of cars don't come with lighters any more ("smoker kit: $30"). My 18-y-o sister in law was unaware that there had ever been a lighter that fit into the slot. She thought we were pulling her leg.

@FreeMan: "Burbling-brook"

HA!

@Novaload: No doubt it's something that slices, dices, and chops... or maybe a fishing rod you can fold and fits in your pocket...

@ash78: That's because the manufacturers are listing them as 'power ports' in their literature.

@charles_barrett: JCW sells Ronco products now?

That's so cute how they have shaped it to look just like a little ole' car battery. Look out AAA, J.C. Whitney's got your number!

@charles_barrett: I so read that as "fisting rod"

@ash78: I think the Germans are the only ones to not abandon the smokers. I know BMW still includes them. At least they did a few years ago. I have an 06 Mini(seem to recall one in the M-Bs at the auto show this year too. They're out of place without that hinge cover.)

Besides, how else will helpless women keep Charlie Sheen at bay.

@Rust-MyEnemy: Given my reputation for Gawker Media posting, you probably just assumed I leapt headlong into the nearest gutter. Not a bad guess on most occasions...

@charles_barrett: Haha! Nah, I just thought "Fisting rod? Wow, US telemarketing is way more liberal than ours!"

Might work for an under 2L low compression engine. I haen't had much luck jumping off dead V-8s with anything less than a big 6 cylinder car with the engine running. Even the 40lb jump boxes don't really work if the battery is completely dead.

If your engine is small enough for this to work, why not just get some sort of auxillary pull start. I remember we had a boat with a 140hp 4 cylinder Chrysler outboard that had aux. pull start. Maybe has something to do with being a 2 stroke.

Why dosen't every car have a tiny trickle charger stashed in the trunk? When you batt goes dead, flick a switch, wait 5 min till the dash indicator tells you to turn the key. It should be standard equipment on all vehicles, as well as a reserve gastank, or a double tank, like the old jags...

it certainly is "compact" if it measures under 3 square inches. anything missing the third dimension has a huge space advantage.

It is certainly more utilitarian than turn signals.

Gee will it work at -30 when the battery dies ?? Reminds me of someone in England who said they had this wonderful dipstick that plugged into the battery and heated your oil so it would start easier, while I was plugging in my 750w block heater and 50w battery warmer.

Surely way too small to have enough juice to start most things? My ~15Kg portable jump pack is borderline a 2 litre.

My Audi has not 1, but TWO cigarette lighters. And the VW Passat I had before it had 3. Personally I'd prefer another full size battery in the trunk. Helps even out weight also. I read a few days ago of one carmaker who includes 2 car batteries in case one dies while running electronic equipt. Think it was Merc.

But does it come fully charged?

If only people would understand & accept annual, or so, desulfation of flooded-cell batteries allows them to last effectively forever...or until the case cracks, then it wouldn't be a problem.

Wife's '02 Lexus is on the OEM battery as is the '99 diesel motorhome...though it has two starting batteries. The roof solar panel helps there, too.

I didn't believe desulfation works, but after doing it for a few years, I've had to buy only one battery...the case cracked.

That said, I carry cables in both cars, just in case I need to help someone driving an automatic.

Oh, and cigarette lighters... The '73 Coupe deVille I used to have had four of them and the '89 420 SEL I have currently has three. The rear door ones don't work, which is a drag when you want to run a bunch of 12V stuff but not off a socket immediately under the radio. I'll get around to fixin' them...after the new thermostat and bumper refinishing.

Back to the Rubik's Cube jump battery...not going to work with current technology...heh, heh...current...for at least 50 years. I like the pull-start idea, though.

We've got a jumper-cable-ended rechargeable=battery-in-a-box that does just fine. The portable-jumpstart-battery is a good idea, but this is a bad way to do it.

Notice that both 5 star reviews are from folks who didn't actually try them, but just bought them and liked the idea.

My take ... it might have a chance on a car battery that's just shy a tad bit from starting, but more often than not, it's a lot shy - and I just don't see anything this small can pump enough juice back to the car battery through that super-scrawny 20-ga zip cord.

Ladas used to come with a fairly good tool kit that included a work lamp and a hand crank. I guess brutal honesty comes as a byproduct when it really doesn't matter if you sell a single car.

The best smoking accessory I've seen is the front bench seat arm rest on a Buick Century. It has a cigarette pack holder, and the driver side is measured for a regular pack and the passenger side is for grandma's 100's.

Would be useless in my 2.4L truck (mainly because of the lack of a cigarette lighter that works). If that thing is dead enough that it has a hard time cranking, it takes another rig with at least as big an engine to start it comfortably. Even one of those big battery chargers with the jump function struggled with it after it sat for 2 weeks.

Yeah the problems with these is not just the chance of blowing the computer or fuse, but the fact if you keep it in your trunk for a year until you need it, it's not going to have any power left to start the car. Most people are not going to bother to check/charge this thing.
With that said, this might be just the ticket to keep in the car during a cold winter in the north, since extreme cold makes hard starting possible, and this might give just enough assistance to bail you out of a jam without becoming a freezy-pop waiting for roadside assistance.
There's real versions of this that have battery couplings that will help a lot more, especially if you have a 8 cylinder engine. I have one with lighter sockets too so you can use it for portable power to recharge a cell phone or anything else using a power inverter (in Florida I keep one for hurricane season just for that reason). The full size ones can probably charge a phone a ton of times or a notebook as well. During the last hurricane, the power was out for three days and I swore never to go through that again.
This is ok for $20, if you live in an extreme cold climate and want that extra boost without getting out of your car, looks good for that.

or, you can get out, push the car abit to get it rolling, and pop the clutch in first or reverse depending on your direction and crank the engine

but oh wait... automatics... n00bs

It won't work on Honda / Acura. Sorry. At least the newer ones.

@acura-tech: Is that only because none of their outlets work with the key not in the "on" position? Or is it something else that Honda's designed in their cars that make me want to go on a Denis Leary in Demolition Man "I WANT high cholesterol!" sort of rant.

This cannot work as a conventional "jump start" tool. The amps would fry the fuse and the wire. This must function as a trickle charge type device. But that wouldn't stop the hucksters from taking advantage of the "they can't say it on TV if it isn't true" crowd. They should be ashamed, but that is a concept that wouldn't occur to them.

I would call it criminal, if it is really advertised as jump start aid. Even a normal starter motor for a 2000cc 4 cylinder engine draws more than 150 amps during start. This would cook the puny wires as well as the fuse of the 12V socket. Even if you would connect it parallel to the battery the wires would not withstand a current like this. And, finally, I doubt that a small battery like this would even deliver half of the current needed to turn the engine.

I blew a fuse plugging a tiny little air compressor into the cigarette lighter. I can imagine what this thing would do to my car.

Since my last comment I did some investigation on this. From what I gather this device is supposed to quick charge the auto battery to enable the car to start from its own battery. I would say a clear case of false advertising, as this is not a jump start device but a quick charge device. From what I know something like this will take significant time to charge the car batteries enough to be able to start, if it even works (which I have some doubts in). Quick charging a car battery from an AC power supply take at least 45 minutes, and those are using quite high currents, which the power socket in the car doesn't allow. So this will most likely take more than 30 minutes, and you'll probably have only one try to start. If that fails, you're back to zero again. Nothing I would bet my life on, if I'm honest.

Want to impress me, start this...

Optima batteries rock.

It is correct that this is actually a relatively slow charger for the vehicle's own battery, not a jump-starter that can actually start the car even if the vehicle's own battery is completely dead or missing.

That said, it certainly is possible to recover from the ordinary sort of left-the-lights-on flat battery situation with a device like this. I've used a 12V 7Ah sealed lead acid battery, as seen in computer UPSes and ride-on toys and such, to trickle enough charge into a dead car battery to get a four-cylinder engine started. That was via alligator-clip leads, but the lighter socket would work too. Just hook up any fully charged 12V battery in parallel with your dead main battery, leave it for a while, then unhook it and try starting the car.

(Or, if you don't much care about the continued existence of the smaller battery, leave it hooked up when you turn the key. Then it'll help out a bit, possibly at the cost of its own life.)