What is the polarity of a car cigarette lighter adapter?

Question

There is a center pin, and two outside tabs. Which are positive and negative?

Seems like this information is also in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_connector.
@Sampo: "ground" doesn't tell you anything about polarity, e.g. there are cars where the battery +ve terminal is connected to the chassis (i.e. positive ground).
@PaulR sorry about that, my mistake. I meant negative by ground. In cigarette connector negative should (probably there are exceptions too) always be outside no matter how grounding is done.
A voltmeter is a handy tool. Pick a decent one up for $5 from Amazon.

Russell McMahon · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-23 08:23:57Z

Every car that I have seen had center-positive cigarette lighter 'sockets'.

All (as far as I know) modern cars use negative ground systems, so the outer negative 'body' is vehicle ground and positive center is battery

You would expect this polarity to be maintained even with positive ground vehicles made by any sane manufacturer (and most insane ones as well).

AFAIR some old British Vehicles and Volkswagens had positive ground systems. No doubt there were others.

Ditto for me. Every car I've seen had positive on center pin. But I always put a protection diode in all devices that I made that needs to be powered from those sockets. Better safe than sorry :-)

1 Answer