The must-have car charger/inverter for your vehicle

With the increasing demand of truck drivers for daily operation comfort, car electrical appliances have long become a "standard" for truck drivers in their daily driving; although many vehicles are now equipped with USB charging ports for mobile phones, they are not equipped with special charging ports for appliances such as kettles and car refrigerators. Many drivers therefore make full use of on-board chargers and inverters.

As we all know, car chargers and inverters can greatly enhance the convenience of our daily driving lives, but if they are not used correctly, they can be a safety hazard!

What is the use of a cigarette lighter other than to light a cigarette? What are the specifications for using a car charger?

Typically, a cigarette lighter takes power from the vehicle's power supply and heats an electric heating unit such as a metal heater or metal heater wire, and is mainly used as a cigarette fire source. However, with the development of vehicles and the changing needs of people, the cigarette lighter has gradually become a power port to power our mobile phones, IPADs, external navigation, car purifiers, car recorders and other electrical devices.   

The structure of the cigarette lighter is also very simple, with the middle elastic head of the interface being the positive pole and the two side snaps being the negative pole, the power supply is directly connected to the car battery. Cigarette lighters are used for a single purpose, so their power is also low, generally the common truck cigarette lighter has a power of 12V/120 W. When we use a cigarette lighter as a charging source, we need to use it with a special cigarette lighter charging tool.

So what are the most common problems that occur when using a car charger? First of all, we must remember not to insert the car charger just after using the cigarette lighter, as well as not to mistakenly insert the cigarette lighter into the backup power port after it has been heated, so as not to cause damage to the car charger and the car's power supply assembly.

Moreover, the cigarette lighter in the car has a clear maximum power extraction, so if we overload our outreach devices with electricity, the power overload will cause the fuse to blow and prevent further normal use. Therefore, when using the car charger for charging, it is important to confirm the maximum power used by the appliance and avoid using high power loads.

Generally speaking, we use car chargers to generally power small electrical devices such as mobile phones, car recorders, navigation, etc. What should we use if we want to use external refrigerators, rice cookers, kettles and other high-powered appliances in the truck?

It is actually very simple, that is we prepare a car inverter.

How to use larger appliances in the vehicle? You can't do it without a car inverter.

They are usually installed in the lower part of the centre console or in the lower part of the sleeper in the form of a socket, so that we can directly plug in larger appliances for power supply, which is very convenient.

However, for some light trucks and some medium trucks, as the vehicle is not equipped with an inverter socket, in order to increase our driving convenience, we can purchase a vehicle inverter as a power supply.

A car inverter (power converter, Power Inverter) is an electronic device that converts low-voltage (12 or 24 volt) DC power into 220 volt AC power. It is a convenient power converter for the vehicle. We can use various electrical appliances in the vehicle by simply connecting them to the output of the power converter (the socket on the inverter).

Most of the car inverters that output through the cigarette lighter have various power specifications such as 20W, 40W, 80W, 120W, 150W, etc. If we need to use more powerful appliances, we need to purchase a high power inverter and then connect the connection cable to the battery to use it normally.

When using the inverter on a daily basis, make sure it is not wet, pay attention to heat dissipation and do not overload it. If you want to connect a more powerful electronic device, it is recommended to start the engine or an external power supply, with the generator supplying power to the electronic device, to avoid a loss of power in the vehicle's battery, which could lead to the vehicle not being able to be ignited or the battery being over-discharged, which could lead to the battery being scrapped.

However, in addition to the "precautions" mentioned above, we should also purchase qualified products with over-current protection, short-circuit protection and leakage protection.

Drivers should not dismantle or modify the inverter to avoid overloading or short-circuiting the lines, which could lead to electric shock or fire accidents.