Ferrari Lithium Battery retrofit

Depending on the electronic embedded in the "battery", you may have zero access to the actual Lithium cells. In this case what your ECU sees is just what the BMS (battery management system) would let it see.

 

I know that everyone has the lithium craze but honestly as the newer cars have more and more intelligent? Systems for monitoring the battery it is always a best to replace what the car has in there from factory unless there is a way to reprogram the IBS (e.g. BmW istp for older cars) .. I have seen what these brains store and use to make decisions and if the data they get is incorrect or what they expect you can always ask for trouble ..my two cents ..this is not specific to this post just a general comment

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I have a Braille lithium battery in my Portofino. Stationary,ignition on,engine off,it reads about one volt more than the original agm. With that higher battery voltage,the charging system puts out less voltage when driving. For best battery life,you should use a tender that is designed for a lithium battery. I use and recommend the Optimate TM471.

 

You do not know more than Ferrari or the team that determines what battery requirements are needed for your car. Stick with what it came with. If AGM..use it. If ledacid..use it. If H6 H7 H8. etc..use it. Stop installing problems..

 

No! It is not an "issue". The Braille battery has and holds higher voltage,so it doesn't need as much charging. The alternator still charges it just fine as I drive.

 

in addition to all that has been said you need a battery tender that is for lithium battery ... Ferrari sells them and others but be sure to get one..

 

That's not necessarily true.

A "smart" lead-acid charger would be plain wrong as these types of charger do send current bursts that could fool the BMS.

By contrast a plain basic charger would make it do if the battery comes with the a proper BMS: all it needs would be stable voltage supply, and the battery built-in electronics would take care of equalizing the cells.

Worst case the supplied voltage is too low and the battery cannot be fully charged, which (aside from the performance loss) is not a reliability issue with lipo chemistry (by contrast lead acid needs to be fully charged so as to "clean up" the lead plates). Under charging is even better for long term reliabilty, as the polymer is more stable when the battery is charged at 20%~80% (when over/under charged it may "puff").


In the end the problem is not the charger, but rather more the car ECU: modern cars do not have anymore a basic voltage regulator on the alternator, they do feature sophisticated voltage regulation routines so as to maintain AGM batteries. These routines are absolutely not suited to Lipo (the initial high amp over-charging of AGM is a big no-no for lipo). Here again, the BMS of your battery may be optimized to cope with the ECU charge cycle, but that's band-aid.

An ideal lipo retrofit should include new ECU firmware.