Garage 54 starts a car engine with 308 AA batteries

Garage 54’s YouTube channel has already accustomed us to some unusual experiments - including a Lada 1500 with… 14 wheels - and its latest project is no exception. Its premise is actually quite straightforward: how many AA batteries are needed to start a car engine?

Yes, these are the same batteries normally used in items such as television remote controls. The aim was to find out how many would be required to provide enough power for the starter motor to turn over and start a car engine.

How can AA batteries start a car engine?

AA batteries such as these provide 1.5 V, so, in theory, eight would be enough to match the 12 V supplied by a conventional car battery. However, voltage is only part of the equation, as current also matters.

For comparison, a relatively small car battery can deliver up to 300 amps (A) of peak current. As you may have guessed, reaching that figure with AA batteries requires far more than eight of them.

That was essentially the basis of this experiment: adding dozens of AA batteries until there was enough current for the starter motor to get the car engine running.

The batteries were fitted into the casing of a car battery, while a copper plate was used as the electrical conductor.

Garage 54’s AA battery numbers

It took 120 batteries simply to make the starter motor begin turning the engine’s flywheel - and those first 120 batteries lost their charge very quickly, so they had to be replaced with 120 new, fully charged ones.

Without spoiling the surprise - I encourage you to watch the video above - it was only at 308 batteries that the starter motor was able to start the car engine.

The limits of using 308 AA batteries

However, because these are not rechargeable batteries, they lose their charge after just four or five cycles and can no longer start the engine.

For that reason, it would be particularly interesting to repeat the experiment using rechargeable batteries, to see how that would affect the outcome.

The usefulness of this Garage 54 project may be open to question, but one thing is certain: it has proven that a car engine can be started with AA batteries. You simply need a lot of them - 308, to be precise.

Source: Garage 54 (YouTube)