It happens to all of us at some point in our life: we need to get in our car to drive somewhere, and it simply doesn’t work. Then, we notice that we left the lights on the whole time we were away, and our battery is gone because of it. It’s no wonder that the car doesn’t start! But how long does it take to charge a car battery? We’ll answer that and much more in this article.
What you need to charge the battery of your car
If you happen to be in a situation where you need to charge the battery of your car, you will have to use an appropriate charger. There are two ways you can charge your battery using this equipment: one is slow and one is fast. The slow way takes a long time to fully charge the car battery and requires you to not use your car for around 24 hours. The fast way only requires 3 to 6 hours, but can potentially damage the core of your car’s battery, so it is not recommended that you do that a lot of times, even though it is more convenient if you are in a time hurry.
Do I really need to stop my car for 24 hours?
Although it is recommended to leave your car 24 hours without working, this doesn’t mean the battery will be charging all that time. Usually, it will take about 10 hours to completely charge your car the slow way. Then, the car’s battery would “rest” for another 10 hours before your test to see if it worked or if the battery needs a little bit more charging. So, the 24 hour period would leave you plenty of room to charge, rest and test the battery of your car, which is why mechanics usually give that time frame when they tell you how long it takes to charge a car battery.
So, how long does it take to charge a battery?
How long to charge a car battery may vary according to different things, such as the quality of the batte
ry, the quality of the charger you are going to use, and the capacity of your car’s battery – if it has a big capacity, it will take a bit longer to recharge all that power. However, the majority of batteries take up to 10 hours of charging before being completely filled using the slow way, which protects the core of the battery and does the work in an efficient way, avoiding unpleasant surprises later on. If you decide to use the fast way, the whole process will only take 3 to 6 hours, which is good if you can’t stop your car for a whole day. Just keep in mind that it is not recommended to do so many times since it’s just a quick fix for the problem and it damages the battery. Plus, you may run out of battery again sometime soon if you choose to charge your car the fast way.
We hope that with this article you now know how long it takes to charge a car battery, the equipment you need to do it and the two ways you can charge the battery!