How To Charge A Car Battery Without A Charger

Electric cars may be all the rage these days, but even before we had cars entirely powered by electricity, batteries were still vital components. In a traditional, gas-powered car, you need a battery to activate any electronic components, illuminate your headlights, and, let's not forget, actually start the car. 

The good news is that there are various portable car battery chargers on the market, which you can use to safely power your car battery back up if it happens to die on you. You could get a charger like the Noco Genius10 off of Amazon. The bad news is that you may not always have a battery charger on hand if you're out on the road, or if you do, it might not be properly charged itself. If you're stranded on the highway with a dead battery, it might seem like your only recourse is to call AAA and wait, but don't count yourself out just yet. 

There's more than one way to get a little life back into your car's battery, so long as you have the right equipment. Specifically, you're going to need either a portable jump starter or a pair of jumper cables, the latter of which will also require help from a friendly motorist.

For about as long as cars have had batteries in them, jumper cables have gone hand in hand with them. There's a good chance you've got a pair of jumper cables stashed in your car's trunk; they're those long red and black cables with the metal clampers on the ends. Even if you've never used jumper cables before, they're still an excellent way to get your car rolling again when you don't have a charger.

Using jumper cables to revive a dead battery is a fairly straightforward process, but the big asterisk is that you can't use them by yourself. Using jumper cables requires two cars: yours, and another with a battery in good condition. This means you'll need to either flag down another motorist on the road or call someone to come and help you. It's a hassle, but it's still a better option than getting a tow.

Once you have an assistant, all you need to do is have them turn on their car and clamp the cables onto the correct battery terminals on both cars. The red cable goes on the positive terminals, and the black cable goes on the negative terminals. Leave the cables alone for around 5-10 minutes, then remove the black and red cables, in that order. Try your car's ignition, and hopefully, it'll work.

Even if you have jumper cables, if you can't get someone else on the road to help you and you don't have any friends you can call to your position, then using them is unfortunately a non-starter, pun unintended. If you don't have a battery charger, and you can't use jumper cables, then how are you supposed to get your car moving again without getting a tow? There is one more potential option: a portable jump starter.

A portable jump starter is a similar device to a car battery charger, except instead of carefully funneling electricity into the battery, it delivers one big jolt all at once to zap it back to life. Like chargers, they're small enough to be stashed in your car's trunk or glove box. Of course, also like chargers, they need to be charged themselves to be useful, so even if you have one, it's not a guaranteed solution.

If you do have a portable jump starter that's ready for action, using it is roughly the same as using jumper cables. Just connect the positive and negative clamps to their respective terminals, start the jumper, and let it cook for a few minutes. Once you think it's ready, disconnect the cables and attempt to start the car.

A portable jumper is good to keep in your car if you don't have a battery charger, and it's also good to have one in your garage if your car won't start while you're still at home. Like chargers, you can get a jump starter like the Clore Automotive Jump-N-Carry off of Amazon.