Pista- Dead Lithium Battery Solution

There's no additional connection to the battery other than positive and negative. They do use different vent tubes though. Quoting a total that includes $350/hr (or more) labor rates from a dealer is misleading when everyone else is discussing parts costs and alternatives to the dealer. Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Actually the lithium battery does have an onboard BMS, See the picture I attatched. The battery conversion kit come with a new external battery state of charge sensor, the necessary cables to hook it up, the adapter for the different vents and some misc hardware if I remember correctly plus the Proxi file for updating the motronic ecu to charge the car properly with the AGM battery. When you consider the cost of doing the correct and complete update and not having to worry about the lithium battery anymore, it seems reasonably cost effective to me.
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That's the Ferrari catalog diagram of 770192 (hence the Pista in the background)

See the correction I made below

The external state of charge sensor is known as a HELE sensor (start stop system) which must plug into the lithium battery's integrated BMS versus the lead acid cars connecting to an external sensor harness.
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The vent tube is simple and doesn't even need to be Ferrari parts. It gets run it through one of the bulkhead plugs in lead acid cars.
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This is not a complicated retrofit and certainly not $7250 worth of parts and labor.

 

The "special connector" is just a standard LIN bus connector. It's same on every other manufacturers' BMS harnesses (except Ferrari doesn't actually use it for BMS the same way on lead acid cars). The only difference is what pin the wire actually occupies.

 

I would wonder even about that? Did Ferrari overcomplicate the system? Doesn't the car have an alternator with a regulator that senses what a battery needs and charge accordingly? That's old tech. The charging alternator does not know the battery is lead acid or lithium.

 

Modern BMS is not designed to charge the battery better, it's to charge the battery as little as possible to reduce load for efficiency and emissions purposes. There's nothing wrong with an old school voltage regulated alternator. Theoretically, a charging system with a "dumb" voltage regulator instead of a "smart" BMS in conjunction with the charge level sensor on the battery to disable stop-start below a certain threshold would leave less to go wrong.

Both the 488 GTB and Pista physically have the same alternator and starter, so there's clearly software trickery going on too. Lithium requires an even higher charging voltage than AGM but is also very prone to being overcharged.

 

As a guy who has already had a battery problem with my Pista, this thread scares the hell out of me.

 

As a guy who does NOT yet have a battery problem with my Pista, this thread scares me as well BUT am very grateful for the research and effort put into this.

Curious, is there a law that manufacturers are required to provide spare parts for a minimum of 10 years from model inception? No idea where I heard this, I could be completely wrong. Please educate me on both this and more importantly, this battery resolution.

Thank you all for your work, please let me know how I can help with the search for a cost effective, safe, and clean solution!

 

There is no law I know of but in GM circles the 10 year after the last model of a run is typical. This was a problem for us for example when we could no longer get reliable LS6 crate motors for racing C5Z06 corvettes in stock classes. We had to go into the aftermarket rebuilders and that dropped the reliability and consistency dramatically. Once it took be 4 motors to get a good one. I should not have been lazy and rebuilt one myself but it is just a chevy how hard can it be. Well very hard. People are stupid. The other issue is "right to repair." There are various laws and proposals to make information available so that items can be repaired. It's a balance between trade secrets and proprietary information and consumer right to fix items they own. Ferrari wants us to buy $8000 batteries from Ferrari not $100 batteries from costco that can do the same job. They want use replacing the whole flywheel not repacking the old flywheel with kluber grease.

 

Here's a full list of the parts needed to install a normal AGM

 

Thank you! So when my lithium needs to be replaced, is it really this easy?

$300 for parts, $300 for AGM battery, plug and play?

 

There may be different programming of the DME as it relates to the alternator and charging, but given Ferrari's tendency to undercharge the battery (all modern cars really) I wouldn't worry about over charging. Lithium batteries need higher voltage than AGM to charge so there's no concern of undercharging in theory.

Also, those prices are in GBP. The best places to order genuine parts are both in the UK (Eurospares and Maranello Classic).

 

Thank you so much. My car is due for its annual next month. Thankfully, no current issues but just in case, I’m still going to chat with my dealer about this resolution and hopefully, if they complete the install, won’t jeopardize my warranty.

I’m going to guess that if my car is under warranty and I do this seemingly easy mod myself, if an issue occurs with the car that can be traced back to the battery, it could likely result in a claim denial.

I’ll report back unless someone gets the answer sooner.

 

Incorrect for the A123 Battery's. Max sustained battery voltage charging for them is 12.7 volts if i remember correctly. Compared to the 13.5-14.5 of a standard battery. If this threshold is exceeded the BMS has an internal relay that can just turn the battery contacts off.

I dont disagree with you about the cost of the kit being what it is or the fact that it should be simpler, but i operate on facts and it seems like your knowledgeable but dangerous on this topic. A motronic update is 100% necessary for proper AGM and overall electrical system perfromance if a swap is initiated.

 

one of you guys needs to do a deep dive to come up with an alternative starting with figuring out how the car works. I doubt 12.7v is correct if the OPs pics of 14+v is taken as real for this model car battery. To charge a battery you need a higher input voltage. Just like old school lead acid about 12.7v is full charge while alternator output is about 14v.

 

Was it really necessary to be quite that asinine? If you claim to operate on “facts” how about you post whatever technical documents you posses that claim this? Your claims directly contradict photo evidence provided by OP of a battery with fresh cells fully charged at 13.7v, charging at 14.1v, AND numerous different documents from LiFePO4 battery manufacturers. Besides, if you’ve ever actually looked at the volt meter in a Pista or any lithium equipped Ferrari, you would know that the TFT screen shows the car charging above 13v almost the entire time the car is running.

All I did was theorize based on known principles. I don’t claim to prove “legal” advice. I did not encourage anyone to try this given the unknown variables at play, and I would never encourage anyone not knowledgeable about what they’re doing to mess around with sensitive and expensive Ferrari electronics.

 

LiFePO4 cells can be charged at up to 3.65v per cell. There are 4 cells in a “12v” battery, so that’s 14.6v maximum charge voltage. Beyond that, the battery’s BMS should disable charging to prevent the cells being overcharged. This is a must to ensure safe operation of the battery. You can fully charge with as little as 13.8v (3.45v per cell) but it will take longer.

12.7v is only 3.175v per cell and that is definitely not high enough to get any substantial charge into a 4 cell, 12v LiFePO4 battery. In fact, at 3.175v per cell, the battery is less than 20% charged.

 

Crazy...and gotta love Ferrari

Already sh!tting my pants when I don't have my AGM powered Speciale on tender more than 1-2 days on this archaic tried and true technology, and then Ferrari pushes development into Lithium, Hybrid, and soon fully electric Ferraris..

 

Attatched a photo of the training material from Ferrari on the battery in the Pista. Recommended recharging voltage on the Fronius charger was 12.7 volts. Most AGM batteries like to be about 13.5-14.5 charging from the alternator, so my point is that the software is not only necessary to charge the AGM correctly but also I suspect to be calibrated correctly for the different battery state of charge sensor. My comments about operating on facts wasnt meant to be combative, but rather just stating I've worked on and around these cars for a long time and follow how I was trained on them which I could have elaborated better.




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Are you claiming to be a dealer trained tech now? You know as well as I that Ferrari doesn't appreciate "insiders" sharing technical information on public forums.

Your statement contradicts your screenshot. Here's the TSB describing using the Fronius to charge Lithium batteries for those who want context rather than a snippet of the WSM. Note the sentence that says to set the "Charge End Voltage value from 14.4V to 14.0V." You can't charge a battery to it's resting voltage without exceeding it's resting voltage.

Additionally, here's the manual for the CTEK Lithium charger provided by Ferrari with the car which says peak charging voltage is 14.4v and that it floats the battery at 13.6v.

 

And here's the tech specs from A123 stating that the nominal voltage (resting voltage) is 13.2v and that the max voltage is in fact 14.4v
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