Garage 54: 308 AA Batteries to Start a Car Engine

The Garage 54 YouTube channel has long been known for its oddball experiments - including a Lada 1500 fitted with… 14 wheels - and the latest test is just as unusual, even if the idea behind it is deceptively straightforward: how many AA batteries does it take to get a car engine running?

Yes, we’re talking about the same AA cells most people use in everyday kit such as TV remote controls. The point was to find out how many are needed for the starter motor to crank the engine into life.

Garage 54 tests starting a car with AA batteries

The challenge wasn’t about powering lights or accessories, but about delivering enough energy for the starter motor to do its job and turn the engine over.

But… how does that work?

AA batteries like these output 1.5 V, which means that, in theory, just eight would be enough to match the 12 V of the conventional batteries fitted to cars. However, voltage is only part of the equation - current (amperage) matters too.

Volts aren’t everything: the amperage problem

For context, even a relatively small car battery can produce up to 300 amperes (A) of peak output. As you’ve probably already worked out, reaching anything like that with AA batteries takes far more than eight cells.

And that, essentially, was the foundation of the experiment: adding AA batteries in ever-larger quantities until there was enough amperage for the starter motor to bring the car engine to life.

How the AA batteries were connected

The batteries were installed inside the casing of a car battery, and a copper plate was used as the current conductor.

Let’s talk numbers

To get the starter motor to do anything at all - specifically, to begin moving the engine’s flywheel - it took 120 batteries. Those first 120 lost their charge very quickly, so they had to be swapped out for 120 brand-new, fully charged batteries.

Without spoiling the result (it’s worth watching the video above), the starter motor only managed to start the car once the total reached 308 batteries.

That said, because these weren’t rechargeable cells, they only lasted four or five cycles before going flat and no longer being able to start the engine.

For that reason, it would be interesting to repeat the test using batteries that can be recharged, to see how that change would influence the results.

The practical value of this Garage 54 project is open to debate, but one thing is undeniable: it has been demonstrated that it’s possible to start a car engine with AA batteries - you just need a lot of them: 308, to be precise.

Source: Garage 54 (YouTube)