Battery chargers have been around almost as long as cars have had batteries, yet in the last couple of decades they’ve become significantly smaller, smarter, and dearer. So, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether all of this expensive sophistication is really needed or even justified?
The stock answer, normally, is that batteries have changed and, therefore, chargers have had to evolve too. Actually, though, that’s just part of the story. Yes, batteries have advanced, but – equally as importantly – cars and car owners have changed as well.
Let’s consider that last point. Many of today’s drivers – obviously not us CM bunch – would consider disconnecting and removing a battery from their car as a bit too advanced – something best left to the 'experts'. If they need to charge their battery they’ll want to do it on-car and with the battery still connected. Yet, paradoxically, today’s cars are prone to suffering problems from this type of charging – should there be an ECU crippling voltage spike. Fortunately, most smart chargers are designed with this in mind. The output is very finely controlled, super smooth, DC, which poses less of a spiking risk than an alternator.
It even becomes questionable whether the traditional good practice – of, at least, disconnecting a battery prior to charging – applies anymore. Granted, there’s zero risk, rather than an infinitesimally small risk, of spiking sensitive electronics if the battery terminal’s removed. But that has to be balanced against the inconvenience of resetting numerous codes and settings after reconnection.
Moving away from drivers’ needs – the need to charge on-car with the battery still live – the other big driving force behind smart chargers is the way cars and batteries have developed. Lockdowns demonstrated how rapidly today’s cars’ many parasitic loads – from alarms, constant RF/card scanning, and memory upkeep – drain a battery down to an unusable state. Yet, ironically, modern batteries, left to their own devices, have almost negligible rates
