Long Term Airport Parking - Li-Ion Jump Pack or Solar Battery Tender?

We always called it a “phantom load”.

 I’m interested if only for power options on the Covered Wagon...

Wally said:

OBD-II Plugs should all be the same so should it work in a car that isn't a VW?  I suppose combining VW bits in a Fiat is probably asking for trouble though. 

Yup. Industry standardization for the win! There may be some older GMs with the single wire setup that don't work, I'm not sure about them. Fiat 500 should be no problem.

Tom Suddard said:

Yeah, IIRC many modern cars basically say “expect a dead battery if you leave for a few weeks.”

Amazingly, our Prius has sat for almost a month at -20 to -40 and fired right up. Unassisted without the block heater as well (though that just warms the coolant and not put direct power back in the battery). It was plugged in at the airport however power wasn't flowing at the carports the last 3 weeks of that before they realized it.

Is doesn't take much to spin over a 1.5l engine with the thinnest 0w20 I can find in it even afters weeks of negative temps. I was really impressed.

It's possible that the battery in a Prius has a little more capacity than average

Keith Tanner said:

It's possible that the battery in a Prius has a little more capacity than average

Yeah I really don't know. I know it has the 12v and then the battery pack but I was always under the assumption the battery pack wouldn't take over and assist the 12v battery's functions. I know it doesn't have a traditional starter either... so who knows? It's an appliance and a damn good one.

Huh, a separate 12v starter battery? Never considered that would be the case. Maybe that means that all the "hotel load" is carried by the big pack. There's definitely some cool engineering in those. Now I want to know more.

Yep, pretty much every electric or hybrid car still has a normal 12v battery to run the lights, radio, wipers, etc, with the main pack usually only for propulsion and A/C. Why? Safety, mainly. There's no reason to have so many volts running through every part of the car, and when you start an electric car you actually need the 12v battery in order to turn on the big one. It's possible for a fully-charged LEAF to need a jump start.