New lithium ion battery tech means you can carry a device capable of jump-starting your car in your pocket. Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow.

Between the invention of the self starter and the end of the 20th Century, the best portable car jump starters weren’t something you carried with you. They were heavy lead-acid automotive batteries ...

You can jump-start a dead car battery by using jumper cables to connect its terminals to the terminals of a functioning car battery or a standalone jump starter kit. However, if you don’t know how to ...

Wayne Cunningham reviews cars and writes about automotive technology for CNET's Roadshow. Prior to the automotive beat, he covered spyware, Web building technologies, and computer hardware. He began ...

We earn commissions from purchases you make using links in our articles. Learn more. A jump starter can pay for itself the first time that you use it, without waiting around for a tow truck. Between ...

The voice on the other end of the phone had that "upset sound" to it that you just knew that he had messed something up and was going to ask me to bail him out. It came out, "Willie, I think that I ...