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This finally arrived earlier this week and will be going into my Spyder. At 10.8 Lbs it’s one of the lightest batteries available while still maintaining the cranking amps and capacity to reliably start the car. More details to follow this weekend.
Nice! Let us know how it is! Specifically how reliability is long term. I just had an Interstate put into my car as I was going for reliability only, but the weight savings, longer life and more advanced tech of lithium ion is great too.
I've had an AntiGravity in my car for ~2.5 years without any problems. It's been a great combination of light weight and reliability. I hope your Braille is, too.
Another Antigravity owner here with nothing but success. And yep, superlight! In fact, the battery saved more lbs than the carbon buckets if I recall my numbers!
Please don't take this as I'm picking on Braille, I'm simply posting because I want you to get the best use out or your Lithium battery. You should get many years out of the battery becasue I know Braille uses great Lithium Cells. I just wanted to inform you with the Braille Lithium Batteries they do not provide an internal BMS (Battery Management System), so you can potentially over-discharge the battery to the point of damage if you allow it to get below 8v, and if you get it in the 4-6v range with a Lithium Battery for a day or more its going to damage the Lithium Cells to a significant degree and lessen the available cycles and give you a much shorter life span and less cranking power.
A BMS is a critical part of a Lithium Battery system. Its a circuit board within lithium Batteries that has instructions for automatic cut-off for under-voltage protection, or over-voltage, over-current and other protections and has Lithium Cell Balancing to keep the cells in a similar voltage range, so you can't damage the battery easily and keep it operating in the safest way possible..
The facts are YES, you absolutely you can run a Lithium Battery without a BMS, we actually make a Motorcycle Racing Battery without a BMS but we do provide a Cell Balancing circuit Board to make is safer. But there is higher risk for issues like over-discharge damage and thermal runaway without a BMS so we only do that for a small Racing Battery. Nothing I'm saying isn't well documented and you can do your own research on Google of what a BMS is, and how it increases safety.
So, my input here is that I would just suggest you are keeping the Braille Battery on a charger or driving often enough to keep a very good state of charge on the Battery. You don't want to let the battery over-discharge at all. The number one cause of dead or damaged batteries in Lithium or Lead/Acid is a simple over-discharge, and Lithium Batteries are a premium and expensive product. If you don't have extra accessories like Cameras, Radar Detectors and other stuff then you may not have a very high parastic draw on the battery but just keep and eye on your voltage for a few weeks if you are not driving very often. Just so you can get to know how fast the battery will drain if your not keeping it on a charger.
Last edited by Antigravity; 10-17-2023 at 11:15 AM.
Reason: bad spelling
I spoke with Braille about the charging needs for the battery and they were extremely helpful in explaining that a charger designed for Lithium batteries was necessary and also said anything more than 2 weeks and it should be on a charger . I picked up a new charger and typically I keep both my Porsches on trickle chargers when I’m not running them so no concerns with over discharging the battery. The communication with them has been excellent actually, they’ve responded to emails usually within hours and always above and beyond with helpful responses. I should have the battery installed this weekend and will move the less than impressive Odyssey lightweight battery into the 964.
TBH I’ve found even lead acid batteries start having issues after 3 weeks of sitting unless they’re used regularly in a daily driver type vehicle so these Lithium batteries aren’t unique. My disdain for the Odyssey AGM battery is the fact that 1 week without trickle charge resulted in a completely dead battery that needed a high amp charger to bring it back.
Last edited by Spyder_2011; 10-07-2023 at 11:00 PM.
I had a chance to get the new battery installed yesterday and overall I’m very pleased with it….which should be the case considering cost. So the new Braille Group 48 is a direct fit into our 987 Spyders and requires no modifications or changes to anything, basically a plug and play.
The original battery that came with the car and majority of the lead acid options out there weigh about 48 lbs. I had previously been running an Odyssey 925 which I wasn’t happy with, it never seemed to have adequate cranking amps and wouldn’t hold charge more than a week. The Odyssey weighed in at approximately 27 lbs, my scale is not the most accurate so the weight below shows a little high. The new Braille weighed in at approximately 12 lbs, again maybe off a little but within a pound of what the factory says.
So overall the new battery drops the cars weight by 37 lbs which is a touch more than having air conditioning in the car. That gets me closer to what Porsche intended for the cars weight before my old age and requirement for comfort took over 😁.
Here are some pics, weights are shown in Kgs for reference..
1. Get a proper LION charger, I use CTEK (I had a braille, I don't any longer)
2. DO NOT LET IT DIE. If it dies, remove it from the car, and charge it outside, ideally way away from your house. Do not jump start this.
You can ask Braille about this but generally their batteries do not have protection circuits in them (I guess weight is the reason...) to keep them from going into deep discharge.
TL;DR - A buddy had one of these blow up, it was on the Braille charger overnight, it caused a fire, it totaled the car, and it nearly burned down a building. From what I understand, Braille had no answers. The speculation is one of the cells had died.
Spyerx, thank you for the heads up! Braille had also stated a LiPo charger was necessary and I did pick one up prior to purchasing the battery. In fact it’s plugged into the battery as we speak and other than needing a couple hours initially to get to full charge I haven’t seen anything unusual. Special chargers apply to all LiPo batteries so there’s nothing unique about the Braille in this instance.
As far as battery failures go, I supply equipment into the industry and I know the cause of failures which typically stem from moisture issues during manufacturing. Again I don’t think any battery is immune to it, it primarily depends on how well the manufacturer controls the ingredients going into making the cell.
Braille said that if I ever get into a deep discharge situation to reach out to them directly and they will walk me through the restoration including any special charging equipment.
I did a bunch of research before making the selection and found issues with all suppliers, I primarily chose Braille because of the back end support. Hopefully I’ll never need them for anything, time will tell and I’ll report back with updates.
I did a bunch of research before making the selection and found issues with all suppliers, I primarily chose Braille because of the back end support. Hopefully I’ll never need them for anything, time will tell and I’ll report back with updates.
Their support post sale after an issue (fire) was non existent.
10-06-2023, 01:04 PM
Ultimate Lightweight Battery…..
