Never get stranded again!

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Ok, so last Thanksgiving my family went out to this lake off of Hwy 230 to do some recreational shooting. It was fun and all, but somebody forgot to turn off the heated seats in the truck, and so we ended up stranded with a dead battery in sub-freezing temps for about half an hour waiting for someone to come and give us a jump.

So while waiting for our saviours, I got to thinking "Perhaps relying on someone else to jump-start your car is a bad idea when the nearest town can be over 50 miles away in these conditions."

So I came up with a plan to never get stranded again. How? Easy. Should you run out of battery power and not have enough to turn over a cold engine, all you have to do is keep a gas-powered, pull-start electric generator with your car, say in the trunk. That way, you can siphon gas out of your car tank to run the generator, which should give you enough juice to get the engine started in case of a dead battery.

I don't know if anyone's tried it before, but it seems like it could work! Any other ideas?

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Why not keep a spare battery? Its lighter, takes less space, you dont have to mess around with fuel, and you dont have to start the dang thing.

Good point.

Also, that brings up another idea. The whole reason people don't like electric cars is because of the longevity of the battery, right? Well why not be able to switch out batteries easily, like they were gun cartridges or something? When one battery dies, you slot in another from a storage compartment. Then later you can charge the used batteries at some kind of charging station. Better yet, they should also make some converter that would quickly charge these batteries using standard 120 AC wall sockets. That way say you crash at a hotel one night, simply take out the battery from the trip and plug it into the wall of your hotel room.

OR better yet, just switch for a fully charged battery at a gas (Electricity?) station.

The smarter move is to wire the heated seats to a switched relay so they don't work unless your car's ignition is turned to ACC or ON. Some makers don't think of this. My 12V powerpoint in my truck works all the time (which I actually like). My dad's SUV has all powerpoints on a switch. Without the key, none of them are on...annoying, but I see why they did it.

Anything that would likely drain the battery if left on all the time should be on a switched relay and not directly wired to the main power.