458 Antigravity Lithium Battery Fail.

A few months ago I spent the money to get the Antigravity lithium battery under the impression that constantly plugging the car in and the anxiety of a dead battery would be a thing of the past.

Antigravity advertises that the battery puts itself to sleep and holds enough of a charge to start your car so that you are never left stranded.

Since then I have not plugged the car in, but I did still drive the car once a week so the car never had issues starting.

Until now.

I went on vacation for about 2 weeks, left the car unplugged as usual and when I went to start it, it was dead. No big deal I thought. I hit the jump start button on the Antigravity battery remote which gave it enough juice to give the car electricity. It however did not give it enough juice to start the car. I checked the app to see how many volts it was getting and it had 11.48v which MIGHT be enough to start other cars, but not enough to bring back a 458 from the dead with all of its electronics.

So now my car is dead, I have to order a CTEK lithium specific charger and plug the car back in. Full circle.

Knowing what I do now, and still needing to plug the car in, I would not have bought this battery.

Not only is it more expensive than the regular battery, I still have to plug it in and I had to spend more to get a new lithium specific CTEK. Very disappointing.

If you’re reading this antigravity, what are your thoughts?


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1. I bought the 60aH which I believe is the highest one they have.

2. Each week I’ll do a minimum 10-mile drive. The last drive before I parked it was 65 miles.

 

To those who have the battery:

I think some helpful data to gather in the future is that when the battery does get to the point of needing to use the Re-start feature, to take note of the voltage the battery is at when you start the engine.

If you’re having no issues with the car starting at 11.48V maybe it’s an issue with my car.

On the flip side, if your batteries don’t get down to 11.48V then there’s an issue with my battery not storing enough juice.

 

I tried doing that in desperation and just saw the volts keep dropping everytime the dashboard screens would turn on

 

Interestingly, on normal guy supercar’s video he lets the battery go and when he uses the re-start function his battery only got down to 11.98V which I’m confident would have started my car.
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Thank you I will contact AG with my findings

 

Update: The president of AG has reached out to me. My lithium charger arrived overnight from Amazon. I will be doing some testing tonight and will update this thread with some data and AG’s explanation of why the battery couldn’t start the car.

 

It’s from the optional battery tracker you attach to the battery that syncs with the app when you’re in Bluetooth range.

 

For those who don’t want to read the summary verbatim, here is the short of it:

- If the car sits for 1-2 weeks, the car either needs to go on a long enough drive to charge the battery up OR it needs to be plugged in to battle the known Ferrari parasitic draw.

-If your drive is short AND you don’t plug it in, the battery can still draw energy from the emergency reserve.

-In my specific circumstance it appears that the combination of leaving the car unplugged and my short weekly coffee shop drives are constantly discharging the battery.

-I am surprised that the 65-mile drive just prior to parking it was not enough to charge the battery.


Here is a summary of what the President of AG told me, who by the way has been nothing short of great attending to this matter.

“Here are some things you should be aware of with the Battery.”

“Though our Battery does have the built-in Wireless Jump Starting that will in fact work, it still needs to be kept in a decent state of charge in a normal manner for it to function properly. For example Ferraris have known issues with draining the batteries that are in them relatively quickly. So our battery can be drained as any other battery can... but our battery, in the circumstance of an emergency, will actually start the car again and let you drive it away.

But, as I mentioned, a battery only has a finite amount of energy before it is drained completely, So I will try to explain what is probably happening. Ferraris are known to have a very high drain on batteries, so what appears to be happening is the battery is not getting back to a fully charged state and is in a constant state of over discharge. Let me explain it this way..... If you start with a full battery and you don't drive for a week or two, then the battery is drained a little bit... but then you go on a drive.... but one drive depending on how long will not fully recharge the battery to completely full. So then if you then don't drive for another few weeks and then drive one day again, the battery is still draining a lot more than it is being recharged and replenished with energy. So the net effect is that it is not getting a full rechaarge to recover and is always operating in a very low state of charge which it never recoups from. So it is basically just above dead all the time. This will eventually take the reserve capacity of the battery also. So in the end it at such a low state of charge that it cannot operate as designed.

So I promise you the battery will work as designed, but it does have to be maintained to prevent that long term low-state of charge where it is operating at its lowest voltage continually. Meaning it does need to be put on a charger more often than you have been or driven more so that the battery can get a full energy recoup from time to time. So from reading what you wrote it appears we are getting a net effect of severe over discharge is my assumption.”

 

I’ve got an update.

I let the car charge overnight and this morning the Voltage was at 13.25V at 93% SOC. I turned the lights on, let the battery die. I hit the Re-Start button and the battery read at 11.78V. I tried starting the car and it wasn’t able to turn it over at 11.78. I attached photos of the readings.


At this point I think I may just have a faulty battery as it seems others have had no issues.


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