Does Your Car Have A USB-C Port? Here Are 5 Things You Can Plug Into It

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Technology in automobiles has dramatically improved over the last decade or so. You have the ability to be treated with a whole host of convenience features that make the driving experience far more comfortable and fun, rather than just being tethered to terrestrial radio. The driving experience can be personalized to your preferences. These technology improvements have also resulted in improved safety features and better efficiency as well. All that being said, sometimes the most appealing feature you can find in a vehicle is the ability to just plug in something to your car, using it as a power source.

People have been able to do this for a long time with the plug for the cigarette lighter, but lately, we have seen a massive rise in the number of USB plugs in vehicles, with the most recent of them being USB-C plugs. It's a real treat to see one USB-C plug in your center console, but things get even better when there are multiple around the vehicle, including being accessible by the rear seats. There are a surprising number of different devices that you can plug into these USB-C ports. 

While some of them are incredibly obvious to most people, there are a number of surprising ways these ports can be utilized as well. Here, we are going to look at five different ways you can use your car's USB-C ports. These are going to be categories and not specific products, as a list of USB-C products for cars would be unwieldy and far too long. The products that could be mentioned will most likely fall into one of the five categories.

We begin with what is probably the most obvious use for a car's USB-C ports, and that is for charging a variety of electronic devices. USB-C products have been in production for about a decade at the time of writing this, but it is really in the last few years when that USB format really took over from the USB-A style that preceded it. You will typically find USB-C connections for most smartphones, whether they be iPhones, Androids, or something else, and being able to plug your smartphone into your car is a major benefit. Gone are the days of worrying that your smartphone's battery is going to die while you are out and about. Of course, you can plug in more than just smartphones for charging, too. You may have a tablet that needs charging.

This is where having USB-C ports all around the car be a massive help. That way, you and your friends or family can charge all of their devices simultaneously, and considering every person's dependency on these kinds of devices nowadays, everyone is keeping a close eye on their device's battery. Some vehicles are going to be able to charge your devices faster than others, but getting any kind of charge for them on your commute is better than not getting any at all. There are certain items you should avoid plugging into your car's USB-C port, such as laptops, as they simply require too much power, but if the device you need charged is rather small, you should be in good shape.

Apple CarPlay and Android Auto have been enormously helpful in improving the driving experience. You can easily play your music, play podcasts, make phone calls, use a navigation app, send text messages, and more without ever having to look down at your smartphone. Not only is it easy to use, but it improves how safe you are when driving, as you aren't constantly looking down at your phone and taking your eyes off of the road. While a lot of vehicles have connectivity through Wi-Fi for you to set up Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, that isn't the case with every car.

Some vehicles require you to hardwire your smartphone into your car for it to work. It is here where you can use the USB-C port in your center console or on your dashboard. You would plug in your smartphone just as you would if you were charging the device, but this also lets you pair it with your vehicle for one of the two hands-free play features. If your car lets you wirelessly pair your smartphone, you can most likely also still use the USB-C connection instead if you prefer, as this method will also charge your phone at the same time.

If you are dead set on wireless, but your car doesn't support it, there are also adapters you can buy that can plug into your car's USB-C port. These dongles can wirelessly connect your smartphone to your vehicle and let you use these features just as if you had a brand-new vehicle. Plus, there are many great adapters out there to choose from.

One gadget that more and more people have been considering to be a must-have for their vehicle is a dash cam. These are cameras that you can mount on your front windshield, and while that may seem like an odd piece of equipment at first, there are a lot of benefits to having a dash cam. For example, if you are in an accident, being able to capture the whole incident can give you a more accurate view on who exactly is to blame for the collision. You can also use it as a monitoring camera for when you are away from your car, capturing any wrongdoing that may be done around it. If you are going to have a dash cam, that camera is going to need power to operate, and this is where the USB-C port comes into play.

Dash cams have typically been powered by plugging the power cord into your car's cigarette lighter. But as USB-C becomes a more popular connection, more dash cams are hitting the market that let you connect to your vehicle that way. If your car is running, this connection will continuously power the camera without issue. However, if your car is turned off, your dash cam will need to have a parking mode enabled for this USB-C hardwire connection to still power the camera. Having this kind of connection also lets you easily switch from connecting to your car's USB-C port to an external power brick if you don't want to use your car's battery while it's off.

So many vehicles run on incredibly complicated software and firmware nowadays. Because they are so complicated, they often require periodic updates, just as you would do for your smartphone, laptop, or any other piece of tech in your life. For some vehicles, they are able to conveniently update these things over the air through Wi-Fi, but not every vehicle has the ability to do that. If that's the case, how else are you supposed to update your vehicle's firmware? Well, you have to do it yourself, and it can be done with the car's USB-C port.

If there is a new piece of software or firmware that your vehicle needs to be up-to-date, you can download it onto your computer. Once you have done that, you can plug in a USB-C drive into your computer and transfer that update to the removable drive. Then, head on over to your vehicle, and plug in that drive to the car's USB-C port. From there, you should be able to easily update whatever needs updating in your vehicle. This may be a bit of a laborious and annoying process, but it is very important business that needs to be attended to if you want to make sure that everything in your vehicle is operating as it should be.

All of the ways you can use your car's USB-C ports are fairly intuitive and address things that, so many people, require for their driving experiences. However, there are other fun ways that these ports can be of use to people that you maybe didn't think of. One of them is to provide power for LED lightning inside your vehicle. 

If you have been in an Uber or a Lyft in the past few years, you have perhaps come in contact with a driver who has transformed the inside of their vehicle into something incredibly colorful and bright. This is typically done with LED lights, be they individual bulbs or light strips. There are several ways you can get these kinds of lights in your car, and one of them is to purchase lights that operate by plugging them into a USB-C port.

If you want to give your vehicle a whole new color palette or simply add some accent lighting in certain parts of your car's interior, there are LED light strips that have a USB-C plug on the end of them, and if you plug them into your car, they light up. These LED lights can connect with your smartphone, so you can change the color to whatever you wish it to be or adjust the brightness to best fit your needs. Some even connect to music, so the lights can change color and pulsate to the rhythm of the song. While so many of the uses for a car's USB-C port are functional, sometimes it can be used for just a bit of fun too.