How to Get Into a Ferrari 488 Pista With a Dead Battery

So I assume you are talking about a Lithium Battery that the Pista's come with.... its made by A123 Systems for Ferrari. So assuming that, the Battery should have a Low Voltage cut-off to protect the internal Lithium Battery pack and you should be able to WAKE up that Lithium Battery by applying another 12v source to the Battery. A CTEK Charger won't wake it up normally because they don't have the current neccesary to RE-SET the BMS (Battery Management System) that the battery has inside of it. You usually need a charged battery that can put out about 12.5v and about 15 Amp to easily awaken this type of Lithium Battery out of its protection/sleep mode.

But additionally please note sometimes these batteries will NOT wake up because the relay inside is damaged, which is not so great a design unfortunately. But the first thing you do before buying anything is to try to wake it up manually with another battery, BEING VERY CAREFUL to make sure you are connecting Positive to Positive , Negative to Negative... and to NOT short-circuit anything out on any near by metals. So be careful. Basically you can connect a Motorcycle Battery or some Jump Starters that have a bypass to your Terminals and simply connect for a few seconds then disconnect it and and check if the battery awakened by putting a MultiMeter to the terminals. It should have somewhere in the range of about 10v to 12v when it awakens if it was not asleep too long.... But as soon as you know it is awake put it on a charger. Keep in mind it might time out (go to sleep) again if you do not get the charger to get it voltage up quick enough if it is over-discharged deeply. This is because the battery wants to see itself above a certain voltage before it will stay awake again.

As I've been told Ferarri does make a kit to change having your proprietary Lithium Battery to AGM, with a new wiring harness, but they charge alot for this... BUT in the long run it might be best because you could use Lead/Acid Batteries (AGM) in the future, or aftermarket Lithium Batteries such as our for a much lower cost and MUCH higher reliability. The A123 Lithium Battery the Pistas come with has the funky relay issue that causes them to fail even though the lithium battery inside is still in perfectly good shape.

I don't know if I would do the renovating aspect because you don't know the condition of the cells inside the battery...so if you pay for it they probably won't guarentee it so you then could be caught in this loop again. On the other hand if you battery does wake up and you get it charged... then see if it continues to work well because this could simply be just a one time over-discharge that put it into sleep/protection mode and it just needed to be awakened.

Lastly, a CTEK Charger at 4 amps isn't really the best option for Ferraris, you want to go with a 10amp Charger in most cases for Cars like Ferraris that are computer intensive with high parasitic drain........ we make those and they do have a BMS wake-up Feature on them so you don't need to have another battery as I mentioned above. So our Chargers are a bit above what CTEK offers. Good luck on this, I understand the frustration.

 

How did you manage this?

 

The supply mode on the ctek supplies 13 volts which is designed to supply necessary voltage to the cars computers while you change the battery out. Wonder if the refresh mode would take your battery out of the lockdown phase?

 

Which model CTEK is did Ferrari supply with the Pistas, or which model are we speaking about? The issue with awakening a BMS is dependant on how the manufacturer of the battery programmed the BMS to awaken, so the kicker is that a Chargers Supply has to provide a solid voltage usually in the 12.5v range, but also enough current for the BMS to recognize it is being provided sufficient energy to allow itself to awaken. For example once you connect a Charger or Supply to a dead battery, the battery itself wants to draw the voltage and current to recharge itself, but also the cars computer system, interior lighting or whatever is turning on when it sees voltage is also drawing energy, so if you do not have a powerful enough supply to overcome this then you may not think it will work.

But there can also be a work around if you detached the Cars Battery and put the Supply directly on the Battery when it is not attached to the vehicle... so like removing the negative clamp putting it aside and charge the battery only.... This way the Supply will only put its votage and curreint to the battery itself rather than the car also pulling down the available voltage and current to the battery.

So on the marketing side... Antigravity Batteries decided to make theri own Charger with a built-in BMS wakening that is rated at 10A which we tested on many Cars and of all the top brands CTEK and OPTIMATE ours could actually awaken all Cars including the Porsches with the A123 Systems batteries while the battery was in the Car connected and from dead. We did not test on a Pista because we do not know anyone with a Pista.

 

I went through this exact scenerio, the flat bed driver that came to pick up the car had to disengage the gearbox manually with a tool that comes in the frunk which he placed down the engine bay, he knew exactly how to do it since others have done the same as us. Luckily he had the tool since we canouldn't access the frunk as the battery was dead. At the same time, he took his battery pak and pulse charged the pista lithium battery and in about 5 min, the lights came and door windows went down and we started the car up so he could flatbed to dealer. At the shop battery was fine and all elec sys were ok. They just recharged the battery and sent her home and I still have the same battery except I make sure if I'm not driving it for a few days to plug it in.

 

I have the OEM Pista battery but need a new charging set up..would the sc-10 connect with a magnetic connector like listed in post #5 in this thread? If so I’ll look into purchasing both. Thanks

 

Hi NSD, thanks for the interest...

So for the image above showing the Magcode Adapter, that is the CTEK version as you will see the orange proprietary CTEK connector, but YES, we also have our own MagCode adapters that are the exact same as what you see above but with our SAE Connector that adapts to our SC-10 Charger.

One more thing to note is that the MagCode adapter for the Pista looks exactly the same as the MagCode adapter for the regular 488 but is wired differently, we have both, but are in the process of getting our warning stickers for the PISTA MagCode Pigtail. We a putting a warning sticker on the Pista model Connector beacuse it will designate to the user it is for the only for Pistas and Ferraris that came with Lithium Batteries. Ferrari does that with all the Lithium equipped F-Cars... meaning they use the same MagCode adapter but it is wired differently.

So those will be ready by the end of this week or early next week for sure since we are just waiting for the new warning stickers to put on them and package them. The Official listing for both models will be up on the website in a few days and I'll post those links when ready. If you need them sooner we can make you an invoice and ship since they are in stock, but not on officially on the site until a few days.

 

Thanks so much, I’m not in a rush, please DM me if no trouble when stickers version available or reply here with the link (in case others are interested).
Thanks again. ‘Neelan

 

For sure and will do both...

 

I went thru the same scenario one year after getting my 2020 Pista. Flat-bedded to the dealer and they advised me the battery would only charge 48 percent. I kept mine on the charger always but coming from Italy the battery was without connection for at least six weeks. My dealer charged me 7300.00$ for a new one. For piece of mind (5 years now) you should consider a replacement.