• iPods can be played on a variety of speakers in a car.speaker image by Byron Moore from Fotolia.com
  
  iPods make taking your music library with you a cinch. These powerful, cell-phone-sized MP3 players can hold as much as 160 gigabytes of audio, making them great companions in the car. Finding a way to listen to them in your car is easy, thanks to strides in technology. Picking the right speakers can be as simple as making a connection via an adapter between the iPod and the car's stereo or as complicated as actually bringing extra speakers into the vehicle.
  
  

Docking Station

• Docking stations are a popular way to listen to music in a bedroom or at a house party. You place the iPod into the built-in cradle, which is also a charging station. The iPod automatically connects itself to the dock's speakers. A variety of companies make docking stations, including Bose, Griffin and Belkin. Bring a docking station into the car, but make sure you have one of the following:
  
  --An appropriate DC power adapter that can plug into the lighter;
  
  --A battery-powered dock and batteries;
  
  --A power inverter that converts your lighter power port from DC to AC.
  
  

Powered Speakers

• Simple, powered speakers also can function well. They should be of a manageable size, similar to those that come with desktop computers. They should have an 1/8-inch audio jack that can plug directly into the iPod's headphone output. To power them, you will need either an appropriate DC power adapter or a power inverter.
  
  

Car Speakers

• There are a variety of ways to connect the iPod directly to your car's speaker system. The easiest approaches include using a cassette tape adapter, broadcasting via an FM transmitter or plugging directly into an auxiliary input in the stereo (see Resources).