I am leaving on a trip this afternoon and my wife wants to watch DVDs on my laptop. Sometimes it doesnt last through an entire DVD. I bought a power inverter awhile back, but I never used it because people told me it was bad for m battery.

I have two questions:

a) is that true, is a power inverter hard on your battery?

b) is that still true with a hybrid, where does the cigarette lighter pull its power from?

O yea, the car is an 05 hch.

Thanks,

Ryan

...most likely a donkey, but if he had to drive a car, i bet it would be a hybrid.

I've done it with no ill effects on a trip from IL to MA.

My hydroponics experiment

You ever notice how hard it is to lip read cartoon characters?
"Crazy is what the sane call Delta Flyer"

no different than plugging in any high-drain device to the 12v. No effect on either the 12v, 144v car or laptop batteries, even if the 12v does come from the 144 pack, which I doubt.

Low-end inverters that are 'modified sine-wave' can make things that require undistorted AC for timers, etc go wacky, but a laptop is fine- the transformer/rectifier brick on your laptop plug sends DC to the laptop, anyway.

Better yet, when you get a chance get a 12v direct power adaptor for your laptop. That way you don't have the inefficency of haveing to invert the power to AC just for the laptop brick to turn it back into DC.

It has been said:
Hybrid drivers come in 3 flavors, greenie, techie and cheapie. Pick any 2.
2005 Prius, Melinium Silver over gray, package 5 (AI)

Hmm good answers so far. JeromeP has a good idea with the DC converter idea. My previous laptop came with an inverter. It works good so long as the car is running (13.7 VDC) but it has trouble and beeps when the car is off and the system is at 12 VDC. It still works with the car off but it beeps constantly.

On a Honda Hybrid the cigarette lighter pulls power from the 12 VDC power system (of course). This system includes the 12 VDC battery, the main pack, the IMA motor and a DC to DC converter. In a conventional car the power for a cigarette lighter would come from the 12 VDC battery and the alternator, Honda Hybrids lack a conventional alternator. The way the 12 VCD battery is charged in a HH is from the main pack thru the DC to DC power converter. The main pack is in turn charged by the IMA motor. So the 12 VDC battery is the first source of power but ultimately it comes from the IMA motor which of course is actually powered by the ICE.

Please follow this link for more info:

http://www.insightcentral.net/encycl...converter.html

Anyone tried a wind driven gen/alt?Works well in airplanes!

cs767capt

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