As an aside, many former-Soviet-bloc vehicle manuals mention switching the headlights on for a couple of minutes before attempting to start the car in extremely

As an aside, many former-Soviet-bloc vehicle manuals mention switching the headlights on for a couple of minutes before attempting to start the car in extremely cold weather. The reason is that pulling ~10A or so causes enough resistive heating that the battery voltage will go *up* over that time, and allow the lead-acid battery chemistry to work better when you throw a couple of hundred amps of starter motor across it. Edit: typo