Cell Phone to Start My Prius - true story

Fake. There's no way a cell phone can start up a dead Prius. You may fool the ignorants but you can't fool me. If you know anything about electricity and ohms law, you wouldn't make this claim. I'd bet you're one of those people who swore up and down that you can unlock car doors with a cellphone or a tennis ball or use 4 cellphones to pop a popcorn. Electricity flows from high to low. Your cellphone runs on 3.7v battery. Your charger puts out 4.2v-5v to charge the phone. Your car battery is normally 12.6v Even a dead battery rests at least 8 volts. Guess which direction the power's gonna flow when you plug in your 5v cellphone charger into an car battery. Besides, a DC to DC converter 's current flows one way. It's not a bi-directional device.

 

If you know anything about battery recovery or rebound, you would know that this story is possible. And the cell phone story would be relevant only in the time delay it added between start attempts.

 

Yes, I do know alot about the 12v electrical system, more than you think. The OP claimed that he plugged a cellphone charger into the cig lighter port and then was able to start his Prius. That's cow dung. Even his thread title suggests that he started his Prius with his cellphone. The cigarette lighter port is not live. It's on ACC. So in order for him to charge his cellphone, he would have to turn the ACC on which puts more strain on a weak battery. If he didn't turn on the ACC, then the phone charger never made connection to the electrical system. Either way his cellphone was never able to start his car.

The battery recovery may have been what really happened, but certainly not the cellphone starting his Prius as he claimed. To say this on his first post ever on a new account on PC seems trollish to me.

 

To the best of my knowledge, in a stock Prius both 'cigarette lighters' are deactivated until after the car is on, you can't even use car chargers there. Any plugging in or putting your cell phone under a energiser bunny is not going to have an effect.

 

Ignoring the headline, I see no direct claim in the story that the cell phone started the car. That may be what he wants you to believe, as do the politicians and lobbyists and marketeers who make their living writing similar copy. But that isn't how I parse the story.

As a simple narrative of the time sequence, it is completely plausible, no cow dung necessary. Battery drained, turned off headlights, car failed to immediately start. Waited a few minutes to allow some battery rebound, then the car started. What happened during that few minutes is just an irrelevant distraction.

 

I call busted...........

 

How could you not see the direct claim in the story?

So you're saying that we should ignore the headlines made by the politicians and believe that Osama is not dead? He's kicking it somewhere on a beach with Saddam laughing at us dumb flocks??

Sure it's plausible by the time sequence but that's not what he wrote. He claimed the "irrelevant distraction" is what started his car.

I'd be ridiculed if I claimed that snake oil started my car. I can see the response and flames now

Snake Oil Started My Prius
Left the head lights for a few hours and didn't know it, came out to start the car and nothing, bust out my trusty ole snake oil and rub it on the battery posts and the damn thing started.

 

Apparently I received different language instruction than you did.

I fear that people who see a direct claim into this story are especially susceptible to misleading political and marketing speech and [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_prompter_hoc"]Post hoc ergo propter hoc[/ame] fallacies.

Newspaper and website headlines are written by copywriters trying to attract attention, not by politicians or even by the authors of the stories beneath.

Too often, these writers don't even read the articles, causing many headlines to conflict with their underlying story. While that case doesn't really apply to this thread, my 'headline filter' was still turned on.

 

So someone else wrote the topic of this thread, other than the OP? Wow.

I prefer to think the OP is just wrong about why his (mythical?) car started.

 

I wrote:

 

Seeing "true story" appended to the title is a good clue that you are about to read BS.

 

Give it up fuzzy. You can't win on this. Doesn't matter how you read it or argue it, anyone with common sense will agree that this thread is totally bull crap and trollish. The OP has yet to chime in on this. There are already 4 members, some with great electrical skills, have already determined his cellphone couldn't have possibly started his car. This thread is not about the recovery time as the OP specifically said that he plugged in his cellphone in and was able to start his car.

I don't know what browser you're using and I don't know what a "headline filter" does but the only "headline filter" I've found was this Headline Filter. Supposedly it filters out headlines, then it's your fault for not getting the full jest of the thread. Maybe your headline filter is defective and reads "Battery Recovery to Start My Prius - true story" instead of the actual headline "Cell Phone to Start My Prius - true story" Either way, you should either turn it off or uninstall it and ask for a refund.

 

This happened about 3 months ago....


I left my dome light running an entire night and the prius wouldn't start up the next morning....true story.... I left it in the garage and got a ride. When I came back, I put the key in, and turned it...and the car weakly started up and ran fine afterwards. My garage started my prius!!!

 

I had a similar problem with the dome light. I connected a portable battery via the cig. lighter outlet and turned the key to the on position and left it there for about 15 minutes and it did charge the battery. The minute I hooked it up this way the lights on the dash got brighter so I know power was back flowing up thru the lighter circuit. So yes, I believe that the cellphone could in fact do this too.

 

WRONG!!! a portable battery has a small automotive SLA battery inside it that's based on the 12 volt system. When you have a dead battery, the voltage dropped significantly. Hooking up that portable battery to the cig lighter with ACC on will allow the portable battery's current to flow from high (portable battery) to low (dead Prius battery) therefore charges it.
A cellphone can't do this for 2 reasons. First off, a cellphone battery is based on a single cell LiPo battery that has 3.8v. That's the first sign right there that it won't work. You can't charge a 12v battery from a 3.8v battery. It just won't work without stepping up the voltage. Even if you stepped up the voltage, there's not enough current to start up a Prius.
Second, The cellphone charger is a one way device. There's an input and an output. The input is the cig lighter end. It takes 12v then down convert it to 4.2v then outputs it to the cellphone to charge it. The cellphone's charging port is input only. It will not allow power to flow out. It's not an OTG-USB device.
There's no cellphone in the world that can charge up a dead car battery, not even a high power laptop battery. The only thing that can come close to even recharge a dead Prius battery is high power Li-Ion 12v power tool batteries. Even then, you would need more than 2
I can't believe there are people out there believe that a cellphone can start up dead Prius. Next thing you know, people will claim they jump started their Prius with a double A battery.

 

Maybe, maybe not. It all depends if the cellphone charger has a diode in it to prevent current reversal. If it does not the coil (transformer) in the charger that convers 12v to 3.8v in one direction would work to convert 3.8v to 12v in the other direction. Since the prius does not use a high amperage starter motor you really need very little current to boot the computer - its the voltage you need. Once the computer is booted you draw off the traction battery. While I agree it is not highly likely, I think it could be possible. I have seen on my own Prius that when the battery was dead plugging in the cellphone did raise the brightness of the lights on the dash.

 

If you are referring to an unmodified Prius, this would be possible only if the car's 12V battery had sufficient power to activate ACC-ON. If the battery was completely dead, then it would not matter what you plugged into the cig lighter outlet since the outlet would be disconnected from the 12V bus. A relay has to be energized before the outlet will be connected to the 12V bus.

There is no way that a cellphone charger will allow voltage to flow from the cellphone battery back to the input. If you doubt this, all you have to do is to connect a voltmeter to the cellphone charger power input, while the output is connected to your cellphone.

In addition, you are incorrect in your assertion that "very little current" is needed to start the Prius. A brief current flow of ~30A is required because of the multiple ECUs (not just one "computer") and the brake system that all require power. It is impossible for a cellphone battery to provide the required voltage and current.

Do not confuse correlation with causality. This is like hearing a rooster crow at dawn and concluding that the sun rose because of something the rooster did.

 

True stories....

I have no traction battery in my Prius and was looking for an alternative. I simply plugged my cell phone into my Prius and was able to drive for three hours on just my cell phone battery alone.

On a different note, I was able to attach wings to my Prius and fly it from New Jersey to California on a single charge of my cell phone. I just put a fan on my car that I bought from Wal-Mart and that provided enough thrust to give me a 3000 mile range.

 

ound: :flypig:
I need to pass this one around among fellow electrical engineers doing power supply design.