Drifting on top of a Lake - Testing CTEK Battery Chargers

Earlier this year, we left the freezing shores of North America to travel somewhere considerably warmer. It would take us almost 20 hours to reach our final destination, but we were glad to be in the relatively tropical location of Sweden.

Whereas our stopover in New York had seen temperatures of 3˚F, a frozen lake, somewhere in the middle of Scandinavia was a relatively balmy 30˚F during the day, dropping to 19˚ overnight. Not exactly T-shirt weather, but not life-threatening either, especially while dressed in the warm Scott clothing we’d been provided with by our hosts, CTEK Chargers.

CTEK is one of those premium battery-charger development companies you’ve never heard of, and one that many of us take for granted. They produce some of the most advanced battery chargers in the world, endorsed with approvals for the majority of premium carmakers across Europe and North America.

Obtaining factory approval for sale as an authorized accessory by Porsche, Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz or Corvette, doesn’t happen overnight. You need a bulletproof product that will perform faultlessly through a barrage of stringent tests – far more demanding than most customers will ever subject them to, but necessary all the same.

And so we found ourselves on a frozen lake, standing on what was claimed to be 12” of ice, which displayed alarmingly large cracks in its surface. We assembled around a very small Audi. It sported Red Bull colors and skinny tires with frighteningly long spikes. The spikes cut deep channels in the ice every time it pulled away and drifted around the makeshift course which was carved through the snow. It would then return and proceed to melt the ice under it with the heat from its turbocharged two-liter engine and tinkling exhaust.

The melting ice and deep channels didn’t seem to concern our Swedish hosts, so we tried to convince ourselves this was a perfectly normal activity. In fact, we were fairly relaxed about the arrangements until somebody handed us a flimsy orange device with short metal spikes, held together by string.

“If the ice cracks and you fall in the water, you stick these in the ice,” one of our hosts explained, pulling the spiked handles from their cheap scabbards and mimicking the motion of stabbing the surface and pulling yourself out.

With that, they turned tail and walked away, leaving us to reconsider the ice and our imminent peril.

FROZEN

The reason we were risking life and frozen limb, was not only for entertainment provided by the Audi, but also to learn the importance of battery chargers and maintainers.

The problem is, while battery technology is improving significantly, the demands upon them are growing at an even faster rate. Add very hot or very cold weather and you can push a battery beyond its limits, especially if the vehicle has been stored for a few days, or was powering a lot of accessories when it was last used. Welcome to our Swedish testbed.

CTEK wanted to demonstrate its latest battery charging technology by showing that extreme weather (heat can be just as difficult as severe cold for a battery) need not put an end to the fun. So they lined up a series of vehicles that all relied upon their charging power to keep them running.

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