This question has two parts:
1) How inefficient is it to boost 12V to 120V and then back to 12V as in using a traditional car power inverter to power a laptop (i.e. the 12V car battery power is boosted to 120V by a power inverter and then back to 12V by the laptop's power supply)?
2) Is there any way to power a laptop directly from a 12V car battery? This would be useful not only for use in a car, but also for a solar-powered home that runs on 12V batteries. If there is a significant gain in not going through the boost/buck cycle of power inverters, then it would seem wise to power laptops and other 12V devices directly from battery power. I realize that laptops have different power supply ratings and some require more than 12V, but it seems rather wasteful to boost everything to 120V before bringing it back down.
Answer
Yes, tons of power is wasted going from 12V to 110V, especially when all you do is to stick it into a psu which also loses some power turning it back into low voltage DC.
You can buy a DC/DC converter which will deliver a 9-20 V DC adjustable voltage when given 10-24 V DC input.
I've built a SEPIC style converter before, for just this sort of thing: http://dren.dk/carpower.html
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