There is nothing worse than dragging yourself from your warm bed on a cold morning to get to work. Oh wait, there is one thing worse! A dead car battery that won’t start because of the cold!
In wintertime, car owners usually encounter problems when they start their car. You may want to understand what causes this so you can prevent it from happening again. After all, the winter season happens every year and it lasts for a couple of months. You don’t want to have this problem every single day, now do you?
In truth, a battery can die in all types of seasons. But it is more prominent during the winter because of three things:
- The power output tends to go down.
- The load increases because you end up using more lights, wiper, heater and blowers. This drains the power in your battery faster than usual.
- The battery cannot recharge as quickly as it used to since you use your car less during the winter.
The Battery Council International revealed that a battery, once it is fully-charged can perform 100% of its power on your car if the temperature is 80F. If the temperature drops to 32F, only 66% of the power is available. When the temperature drops to freezing point, only 40% is available. That is why your car batteries tend to act up during the cold season.
Here’s how it works. A car battery generates an electric current once the positive and negative terminals are connected. This connection initiates a chemical reaction that is responsible for the electrons that keep the current going. When the temperature is lowered, these chemical reactions slow down. This lowers the current being produced to supply the demand that your car needs.
The only way that you can hope to use your battery during the winter is to keep it warm. That will help speed up the chemical reaction that will fuel the electric current for your car’s engine. Even if your battery is fully charged, it will only perform about half of what it should have during warmer weathers.
To learn more about keeping your car battery from failing during the cold season, read another article about winter-proofing the battery of your car.
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