How does a car cigarette lighter work?

Beej Jorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org to Technology@lemmy.world – 187 points –
How does a car cigarette lighter work?
lumafield.com

This is an ad for something CT-scan-related, but it contains a good breakdown of how an old car cigarette lighter works. And it has a couple interactive CT Scan explorers past the video.

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It's cool how elegant the design is that it automatically ejects when it's done heating up without needing a sensor and digital system to read and handle that action. It's also cool how a feature designed solely to light a cigarette has been adapted to power all sorts of other things. I wonder if these ports will be obsoleted in favor of only having USBs.

My electric car only has USB ports and no cigarette lighter, so I bet you're right about it being replaced.

My first GPS came with a cigarette lighter plug.

My next one came with a USB cable along with a cigarette lighter to USB adapter.

I think most these days now come with a USB cable but no adapter.

I’m now starting to see some devices come with USB-C cables.

You're still buying GPS devices? What's wrong with your phone?

Not judging - genuinely curious why some people buy them.

Bought my first one probably 20+ years ago at this point.

Bought my second one probably 10+ years ago when traveling abroad and it was more reliable and cheaper to have offline maps of the countries I was going to.

We like to travel to places that often have spotty cellular coverage, if at all.

Ah okay, I don't go to places with spotty coverage all that often...and when I do I just download that part of Google maps onto my phone and it works just fine. And by "that part" I mean a significant part of my country! Small world here in Europe I guess.