I bought this to top off my tire pressure at home. I already had an AC to DC converter which makes it easy for me to plug into a wall outlet versus plugging into my car cigarette lighter. I'm sure it will work fine plugging into your car cigarette lighter outlet, but u have to have the car running in order to do so. And I'd rather not have my car running while in the garage. If u r buying this to fill your tires with air pressure, it's not going to work--or at least not very long. It's not made for that and I'm sure you'll burn it out very quickly. I put about 5lbs of pressure in each of my tires first time using and it took about 1 minute or so to do so for each tire. It got a little warm but not hot.We'll see about longevity, but it works great for my application and I'm sure it will for you if u understand its limitations. Would buy again based on what I know so far.