I store my cordless screwdriver and drill in my garage, where it gets cold in winter and hot in summer (duh!). Before I got married, my wife and I both had cordless screwdrivers, and both of the screwdrivers died at the same time. I was told the cold can cause the batteries to not take a charge, or not work at all. Should I bring the new one in the house?
Does the temerature affect these products (hot or cold), and how about cell phones left in the car? Does the same go for them?
All lithium batteries, including the rechargable power packs on things like drills and cell phones, are affected by the temperature. The power coming from them is dependent on a chemical reaction taking place inside the battery, which is temperature-dependent. Most appliances that rely on rechargable batteries (or non-rechargable lithium power packs) come with warnings about this somewhere in the instructions (my brand-new Xmas camera’s instruction packet flat out tells you not to use the built-in flash in cold weather). Of course, I’m just about the only person I know of who reads all the way through these things before using them ;). IIRC, “cold” in this context means 40[sup]o[/sup] Farenheit or below, so it’s probably just a matter of it being winter (assuming you’re in the northern hemisphere, of course).
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