And you have to buy a new Battery tender at $150 on top of it...

 

Which battery tender is recommended for this?

 

For a 2019 or other models I recommend the H6 Case size at 40Ah . It's only 13.5lbs....compared to stock H8 Lead/Acid Battery which is 60 lbs..... 46lbs weigh savings roughly.

Also the H6 Case size has a smaller footprint. Its about 3" Less long from left to right.... but will still drop in for fitment because the way Aston mounts the batteries is from front to back, and all the "H-Series" Sized Batteries are all the exact same size.... Meaning we have H5, H6, H7 sizes.... and the Vantage has the H8. But all the H-Series Batteries mentioned are the same height and width measurements, only the Length changes and that does not matter because the battery mounts using the front and back footers that are all the same on those batteries I mention. So ANY of those sizes work. But I suggest the H6 size because gives you a smaller battery case size but still has enough seperation on the terminals so the cable reach easily.

 

Well, no you don't have to buy a $150 dollar Battery Maintainer....

1- If you are driving enough to keep the battery charged you don't really need one, but in reality I suggest everybody does have one... not because you HAVE to have one but for the following reasons. a) First you do not want to leave a Lithium Battery on a Lead/Acid Charger because often Lead/Acid Batteries have a De-Sulphate mode as I state above. That is not good for Lihtium because it often spikes voltage to the battery. B) If you do leave the car in storage often and the battery over-discharges/dies, you can use the built-in Jump Starter feature and start your car... but at this point the battery should be recharged since it is low on energy. BUT what if its snowing and you don't want to drive the car around for 30 minutes to fully recharge the battery, or if you don't have the time.... then just put it on a charger and your done. C) Last, a charger/maintainer is often the best case scenario if your not driving often because you might also have additional accessories that you put on the car creating more of a parasitic drain. So best to just keep it in a good state of charge with the proper maintainer.

2- You can get a lithium maintainer for about $60 dollars.... We only recommend Optimate or CTEK because they are making specific charging curves for Lithium Batteries... some of the other brands like NOCO, Battery Tenders are just using their lead acid charging profiles with a minor tweak and calling it their "Lithium" Charger"... These cheaper ones often cycle the battery more often than necessary as they will also do with your Lead/Acid battery. Yes you can buy the Optimate 5Amp Charger or CTEK 4-Amp we offer for in the $80-120 dollar range but is a high quality rain proof chargers that allows for much faster charging if the battery is over-discharged.

 

This is a brand new product in our Auto Battery catalog. It is also cutting edge technology with the built-in Wireless Jump-Starting.. so we are trying to arrange some things, but this is actually a great price as far as this market goes.

I don't think many realize is that our competitor Braille Battery is literally TWICE the cost without any of the safety and built-in protections we offer. Their similar Amp Hour Lithium battery cost twice as much and as I said lack ANY of the modern technology. Their battery is not on the same playing field as what we are doing. Yes they are in more Race Cars than we are.. but a Race Car Battery is NOT a good Street/Performance Car Battery because it lacks the necessary protections for Safety, Long Life and user functionality. There is no circuit board to control over-discharge on that type of battery, which is the number one cause of battery failure, and creates the safety risk for Lithium Batteries. There is no Cell Balancing to keep the cells balanced as they discharge and recharge, which creates a longer lifespan and safer operation. There is no short circuit protection, as we have, so if you dropped a wrench or anything across the terminals you would not get a massive arching for over 1000 amps. So when you compare the Apples to Apple we are by quite a way offering the best priced most advanced Lithium-Ion Battery on the Market. So yes the price seems high but if you compare you will see the pricing difference.

With that being said Lithium may not be for everyone, some don't care about weight much, but the performance guys do. We we see the massive weight saving, much longer life span, and the jump start feature as outweighing the cost difference. But the cost to enter the game is higher for sure. but it does pay itself back if those features mean something to you.

 

Could you elaborate on what exactly is "built-in Wireless Jump-Starting"? Is there a secondary cell in the case that is switched over for jump starting? How does a seemingly low charge battery suddenly provide extra current for starting on-demand?

 

HAHAHA! Rich, with passenger seat now pulled out in prep for my lightweight seats install this week.....I am lighter!! Question is, for how long?

 

Well, there a bit to it... but built into the Battery Management System (BMS) we use some information from the cars system to determine when and if the battery is being over-discharged and have a decision made within the battery to put itself to sleep with enough energy to start the car again.

 

For us with those EU/UK spec cars, this is worth elaborating upon.
The devices that are still live when the car is locked causes a drain upon the battery. Add dash and and other gadgets and the quiescent drain gets worse. There are numerous stories of dead cars after being left for not-considerable lengths of time. The propensity to fit ‘maintainers’ is such an issue because of the fear of a flat battery.
Having a reserve store of energy to give the car an emergency start capacity is brilliant and a great ‘get out of jail free’ card. I can’t emphasise this enough. It’s genius and I want this battery just because of this!
But, it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem we have.
We all know that if you drop the voltage on an Aston so low that the car will not start, you end up with loads of electrical gremlins. Door and roof modules that half work, if at all. Loss of misfire correction data. Window and seat full reset sequence required. And finally, the risk that some gremlins just don’t go with a fully charged battery and that module needs replacement.
Race cars don’t have memory seats and 24/7 trackers etc. The only purpose of the battery is to spin the crank. So having a handful of amp hours and a lot of cranking amps is all you need.
You wanna sit anywhere for a while with 13 speakers blasting out Guns’n Roses or go on holiday for a couple of weeks or more and those amp hours become pretty important.

If you ‘need’ a lightweight battery then this is probably the best ‘track day’ accessory battery I’ve seen. If you’re like 99% of other Aston drivers out there then it’s a bit of emperors new clothes and the opposite of what you actually need which is 90Ah+

Just sayin’

 

Ok I'm not a battery expert, i'm just a car guy with an interest in technology and I have done some reading around batteries.

I agree with everything you have said and have experienced much of it myself including having to reset my window modules in my Vantage. The get out of jail card is a fantastic idea. The problem is the last bit is based on a false assumption comparing two different battery technologies. One of the fundamental problems with lead acid batteries is they only achieve their rated voltage for about the top 30-40% of being fully charged. Thats why it you have a flat battery it takes so long charging before you can do anything useful like start you car. What this means is with a 100Ah battery only the first 35Ah you drain is good after that the voltage falls.

This is completely different to LiFePO4 battery tech. They can achieve their rated voltage until they are almost completely deplete. I have had a LiFePO4 in my Elise for nearly 3 years, it only weighs 3.4kg about 11kg less than the original (45Ah lead acid), the car has an alarm and immobiliser. The amount of time it can stand and then still start is very similar if not a little better with the LiFePO4 . What you don't get is that time were you get in the car all the lights come on and then is fails to turn the engine over. The other side of this is that I did leave my car standing too long and it was flat. I only needed to charge it for about 5 mins before it would start and then I just went for a spirited drive to completely recharge it.

If these quoted figures are true Ah then I would expect the 40Ah to perform as a 90+Ah lead acid.

Scott might like to comment on this or just tell me I'm talking rubbish.

 

Well, every day is a school day. I’ll be very happy to be educated too.

 

Sorry for delay, I'm out of town in the mountains....

Anyway Drac has quite the good grip on the Lifepo4 technology.... and what is he is stating is accurate for the most part. The issue is it is very hard to do and apple to apple comparison against Lead/Acid. I do NOT know all the extra draws that the Euro Versions of the Aston have. So it would be great for some Aston guys to do general and easy to do Amp Draw testing using a Multi Meter.

When Drac spoke of the differences he was accurate...as well as some of the following issues.... For example a Lead/Acid battery has something called self-discharge... meaning the chemical reaction between Lead and Acid themselves discharges the battery itself so even sitting on a desk the Lead/Acid battery will draw itself down significantly faster than Lithium Battery would. Also Lithium sits at a higher resting voltage than lead which would, at least make the Vehicle understand its at a higher voltage even when over-dischrged. Also once you start the Car the Alternator should kick in immediately providing higher voltage from 13.8 to 14.8 depending on vehicle model/manufacturer, but additionally a 40Amp Hour Lithium would take a charge significantly faster than a Lead/Acid battery upon the restart. Our particular low-voltage cut-off will drop down to about 12v before putting the battery to sleep... but a 12v Lithium Battery has much more cranking ability than a Lead/Acid battery at 12v due to the significantly higher cranking power of a Lithium Battery. So the car would be started even when at lower voltages. So there are a few things that would be in favor of the Lithium Battery in certain circumstances...

But with all the being said, I do not know the level of Parastic drain from an Euro Car, nor have I significantly tested in multiple different models of Aston, but we are testing in our second model shortly. I think about 50Ah would be a sweet spot for cars with a higher level of Parasitic Draw, but on the models we tested in the USA 40Ah seems to be perfectly fine.... and that was left sitting for over a month at one time I beleive and still sitting at its 13.2v sweet spot.

So we are very conservative when we recommend out batteries because we DON"T want to make any false claims. So we will continue to test and evaluate. I will try to find some testing for a Euro spec Car in the upcoming weeks.

 

Found this post and saw that there is a UK ditributor.

https://www.antigravitybatteries-uk....r-battery.html

sadly the battery is £912 which is about $1100 dollars!

 

since one year, i have two PS30 lithium battery in series so it is much better 30A x2 = 60A

https://powerlite-units.com/power/ps-30.html

in series with those cables :
https://www.ebay.fr/itm/LOT-DE-2-CAB...oAAOSw-itXtvw0

 

If you need a UK car with sat nav and memory seats that gets used once a week or so for any testing I can offer mine up