Car Battery Meter
 

So, I keep seeing this car battery commercial during the Stanley Cup Playoffs about how aggravating a dead car battery is and, yeah, that can be a real pain.

I have a charger for my rechargeable batteries that can tell me how much is left. Hell, remember Duracell and the little green meter that was on every battery in the 90s? I mean, the technology isn't something crazy so why can't we have it for something as important as a car battery.

I don't even need to know how much it has down to the percent but a little light like the gas light when you're down to below a gallon would be nice.

SI

If you take it into auto zone, they will test your battery strength for free.

I don't think there is a huge market for this. Most car battery incidents I would imagine are because of leaving lights on, etc...

It seems like a battery doesn't need to be replaced often enough to make this something worthwhile.

Also, there are some conditions that can occur that would not be readily detectable. a battery could be charged properly, but the battery could be bad, which could mean that even though the battery is charged it is still unable to crank the engine over. This is why when you take the battery to autozone, they place the battery under a load when they test it. A simple meter would be unable to do this.

Good to know all of that, guys- that's why I asked :)

SI

Eff the explanations. We have cars that can parallel park themselves, give me a barely useful car battery meter!

What happened to those car batteries that had a reserve switch on them?

You know, the batteries that if you left your lights on all night and your battery was dead, all you had to do was flip a switch on the battery and your battery would have just enough power to instantly start your car, so it could recharge itself.

What ever happened to those batteries? I remember seeing ads for them about 10-15 years ago. They were probably high dollar batteries, so I never thought about putting them in the clunckers I was driving back then; but now I would be interested in buying a battery they came with its own jump.