The auto cigarette lighter port in a vehicle may not be enabled by default in rental vehicles and there is good reason for this. Not all people smoke and some rental companies would rather help to prevent having to take extra cleaning measures to get the smell of smoke out of their vehicles. Of course, not everyone smokes and there may be the need to use the cigarette lighter port in a rental vehicle to plug in a cell phone charger or other device such as a GPS navigation system.

The easiest way to ensure that the cigarette lighter is enabled in your rental vehicle is to ask the rental car employees if it is enabled. If not, they may try to ask you if you would like it enabled for an extra fee. This fee is to cover the extra cleaning costs of removing smoke smell and residue. You could try to persuade them that it is not for smoking and that you require the port to charge a phone or do something else which is non-related to smoking. They may or may not enable the cigarette lighter for you.

One of the easiest ways to fix this is to find out what fuses are used for the rental vehicle you use. The fuse for the cigarette lighter could simply have been taken out in an attempt to help prevent smoking in the vehicles. If this is the problem, you could easily fix it if you know how to access the fuse panel and know where to put in the appropriate fuse. Of course, if that is not the problem, you may need to request a vehicle that does have a working cigarette lighter from the rental company.