The Porsche GT3 RS is a car that uses a lot of exotic materials to try to reduce its weight. Much of the car is made out of lightweight materials such as aluminum, magnesium and carbon fiber. Porsche went to the extremes with the RS to try and make it lighter to the point of it having a stripped out interior, thin glass and even a Porsche crest sticker instead of an emblem on its carbon hood! Porsche also has a lightweight option group called the Weissach package that shaves 39 lbs from the RS for the price of only $31,000! We are going to try to beat that weight loss on Project GT3 RS simply and with a lot less money with the help of our friend at LITE BLOX!
To shave weight off of our car, we opted for the cheapest way to shave a bunch of weight from a bad location in the chassis. The 911 has a heavy battery located high in the front compartment on the firewall. It is mounted about as high on the firewall as possible, probably for easier maintenance. This is good for that but horrible for its effect on the center of gravity. We opted to replace the stock battery with a LITE BLOX LB26XX Lithium Iron Phosphate battery. This is an advanced ultralight battery that is available in the European market and currently undergoing certification for sales in the USA now. It will be available here next year.
Lithium Iron Phosphate battery chemistry has a very high capacity and a long life cycle at lower voltages which makes it ideal for standard automotive applications. The use of phosphates instead of more common cobalt chemistry is easier on the environment in both the mining to get the cobalt and this disposal of it in the used battery.
The LITE BLOX battery is extremely lightweight. LITE BLOX claims a weight of 5.7 lbs for the LB26XX but we weighed it at 6 lbs. At this weight big deal! Porsche has an optional Lithium battery for the RS but it weighs more at 13 lbs. It also costs a whopping $4150 at a discount.
For its light weight, the LITE BLOX battery is amazingly powerful being able to deliver 840 cranking amps for more than 10 seconds of load and an initial 1040 amps to get the cranking started! There is more than just light and pretty behind the LITE BLOX’s carbon fiber case. Of course, carbon is used for its strength and light weight but the outer case is mechanically, thermally and electrically isolated from the inner battery by a layer of molded-in foam that protects the battery and its electronics from impact, heat, and vibration.
Finally, the LITE BLOX battery has sophisticated smart electronic controls to protect the battery from cell imbalance, overcharging, improper charging, and reversed polarity. In addition to those features, the battery has data monitoring and logging of its cells charge state and temperature. LITE BLOX’s battery also has an automatic and remote shutoff with anti-theft provisions built into the electronics to protect the battery from drain in extended storage (up to 300 days!). The batteries controls are accessed via Bluetooth from your cell phone, it’s all pretty amazing!
Since the LITE BLOX battery has a significant weight saving, this could affect the cars corner weights quite a bit. In a prior article, we had shown how much a battery can affect a cars weight distribution and it is significant. In our experience, most decent drivers can feel a 1% change in weight distribution on the track and 1% can make a pretty big change in the cars overall balance. To see how much the LITE BLOX battery would change our car, we corner weighed it first before starting.
Our car ended up being a lot heavier than the 3130lbs that Porsche claims, weighing in at 3248. That is after our car had already lost 15 lbs from the Dundon Motorsports exhaust system we had previously installed. That is a 133 lbs difference! We think some of this discrepancy is due to our optional extended range 23-gallon gas tank that is around 2/3 full. So perhaps some of it is fuel load, some is a heavier fuel tank itself, floor mats and perhaps our factory optional airlift system is contributing to the weight. Our weight distribution is close to 39/61 in our tail heavy rear engined 911 even with our Dundon exhaust taking the weight out of the far rear of the car.
36 comments
Oh, finally a review of a well deserved battery. Oddyssey/ Optima’s/ Braille are things of the past.
I too have the LB26 installed in my car and I must agree, it’s a great piece of engineering.
“The battery also has an app activated anti-theft function where it will shut down all power to the car if an unauthorized entry is detected.”
I am quite curious to know the level of security between the app and the battery. How hard would it be to trigger such a feature in a way that the legit owner would not be able to start their own car?
I mean if you are already in the car and can pop the hood then a jumper pack on the battery terminals would bypass any security that the battery provides. It just sounds like something that could go wrong and prevent the legitimate owner from using their car, especially in a world where pulling the car on to a flatbed is the easiest and quickest way to steal this kind of car.
I am not a fan of adding complicated features that add failure modes with out actually increasing the utility of the product.
Those questions should be addressed to the manufacturer. As far as security, any hindrance is going to hamper theft and not having an operational battery is a pretty good one as thieves probably don’t carry extra batteries or even jumper boxes. It makes its so towing is one of the only ways to steal the car.
I took a look at their website and couldnt find any mention of how the function actually works, i thought that you might have received more information.
I also have learnt not to make any assumption about thieves, especially when it comes to high value targets. All it takes is one to case the car and they will know exactly what to bring to take the car, for them the time spent casing their prize becomes more valuable the higher the value of the target.
For clarification I am not arguing against anti-theft features, my argument is regarding the value of adding an extra mode of failure that may hamper the legitimate use of the vehicle for the owner. I just don’t believe that the extra anti theft feature is worth the possible failure mode given the security already built into the car, note that this judgement applies to modern cars with their built in anti-theft systems.
Adding attack vectors while saying that they are for security is counter productive, especially if criminals figure out how to trigger the anti-theft feature remotely and potentially leaving the car and driver stranded somewhere and even more vulnerable to a confidence scam (at the price of the batteries, they will mostly be installed in expensive cars). All one has to do is look at the attacks available not only for existing vehicles but the general lack of security regarding most IOT equipment to be concerned about any added connectivity. (disclaimer: i work in information security so my train of thought is often more paranoid than most)
Anyways, I have sent the following questions to the manufacturer:
How does your anti-theft feature work?
How do you maintain security between the App and the battery its self?
Is it possible to update the firmware of the battery to protect against any future discovered vulnerabilities?
I will let you know when i receive any answers.
Please do.
to add to my previous statement, i took a look at your screen shot and you most likely connect to the device over Wi-fi (the wifi signal with the x gives it away). I sure hope that they at least use WPA2 and some other form of encryption on top of that.
I can tell you that most likely your battery broadcasts a beacon on regular intervals and that anyone wardriving will be able to pick it up. This could potentially make it easier for thieves to case your vehicle and devise an opportune time to take it. I would love to get my hands on one of these to see how secure it actually is and if the anti-theft feature actually does anything or if it is just there for marketing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardriving
It’s Bluetooth if that makes a difference.
It does actually, it is a more secure protocol and a much lower effective range. Its the lower range that is beneficial as it makes it harder for people to pick up the signal. The big issue with signal emission is that it could potentially give away a storage location, especially if there were several of those batteries emitting from one location. So you see how sometimes these “security” features can be concerning as they may make one type of attack harder at the same time they could make it easier for a different kind of attack. Security can sometimes be counter intuitive, nothing is ever truly secure but we have to be careful what trade-offs we make in its name.
Its range is pretty limited, like at the most 20 feet. If a hacker were to hack the battery they would just be able to turn it on or off right? That in itself is not much of a risk I think.
well that is part of the point, where Bluetooth has an effective range of 20 feet or so, WiFi has a much larger range. Both technologies send out a radio burst at regular intervals and can be used to locate thing, like a non-descript warehouse that stores vehicles. It is also worth noting that the effective ranges can be increased based on the shape and size of the antenna on just one of the transmitter/receiver pair. We all now carry these signal generators with us too, search YouTube for “Defcon 21 – Stalking a City” for a good WiFi example of how erroneous signals can be used nefariously.
There are other things to be concerned about though, like can you change the bluetooth passphrase? is it hard coded in? Is it individual to each battery? and you would think that last one would be a no brainier but hard-coded passwords have been discovered in all sorts of hardware, even Cisco routers. Good security is hard to do properly.
So besides the location beacon issue , you are right, a hacker might be able to turn it off and on. Turning it on when it is supposed to be off would make it easier to steal but the other failure mode (turning it off when it is supposed to be on) can be dangerous too. This could be used in part of a larger scheme to strand the owner somewhere or maybe even get the owner to leave their vehicle somewhere. The reason that this is concerning is that this is a 2000 euro battery which means that it is not going to be in your grandma’s civic, it will be in high dollar vehicles which are often driven by important, rich and or powerful people, when you increase the value of the target then you increase the risk of security breach/attack. There are many ways that a simple disabled car can lead to a much more complicated operation.
Yes, I realize that i may be being a bit paranoid but good security is hard to implement, and when it is being used as a selling feature it should be tested and disclosed to determine how secure it actually is. There are too many products out there that use security as a selling feature and actually make you less secure, the targeted consumer wouldn’t know the difference until it is too late. How many car people do you expect to understand computer security?
I like the way you think. I work for an OEM as an electrial engineer and I’m always thinking of attack vectors.
“Porsche claiming a curb weight of just 3241 pounds” – Car & Driver
https://www.caranddriver.com/porsche/911-gt2-rs
“Porsche says the GT2 RS weighs 3241 pounds with a full tank of fuel” – Road & Track
https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a10244618/porsche-911-gt2-rs-first-look-specs/
“To bring the standard 2018 911 GT2 RS’s weight in at its official 3,241 pounds” – Automobile
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.automobilemag.com/news/first-drive-2018-porsche-911-gt2-rs/amp/
3,241lbs is only 7lbs lighter than your car, 22lbs with the stock exhaust, and 121.5lbs lighter than your car with a full tank of fuel -99.5lbs more (15.8gal x 6.3lb/gal). 2/3 of 23.7 gallons = 15.8gallons.
So the GT2RS with the front lift is actually 3,369lbs with a full tank of gas.
What is the purpose of this car? Scale art? I would much rather see some lap time comparisons. The only way that car can justify that colour [sic, Canadian] and the money being thrown at it is with some performance testing. Boring! Sad! Making me belligerent.
So dyno testing and ECU development isn’t testing and neither is data? Lame.
Yes, lots of number are being made that say this car should be faster than before. Same for the GTR. I guess we can just assume that it is the case and be happy with that. Saves on rock chips!
Or hey, maybe we can upload the specs to Forza and let that tell us how much improvement has been made! Heck, who even needs the physical car! Next project can just start and end in simulation!
On a more serious note, as a racer it frustrates me to see Joe Public impressed by someone driving something like this on the street where it’s potential can’t be safely approached and likely never will. They are impressed by the numbers such as the ones being generated in this project. Joe will be in awe of this car even though the combo of car and the usual squid behind the wheel would be blown away on the right track by a John or Sue in a E36 M3 who has put in some time and effort to becoming a competent driver and done some real world (laps) testing and tuning on their car. The tangible result to me is practical performance. The spreadsheet doesn’t get me fired up (well not in a good way). Why should I care that you can go to Walmart with 42 less lbs holding you back when you are limited by traffic and a speed limit anyways? Of course these are all my personal biases and values, but I would give the guy in a dinged up track day prepped Miata a thumbs up before giving the insecure wealthy guy the ego-boost of a glance when he is driving his showroom fresh McLaren 720s automotive cod-piece to Whole foods.
That turned into a rant fast. I like the tech on the site, I just need to stick to articles about the cars you folks are willing to track like the Integra.
I’m not here to defend MotoIQ or Mike’s article (or the owner of this RS) but Clayton, what should the owner of this RS have bought instead as a replacement battery? Auto Zone stuff?
An RS here in Europe costs about $250,000. The price tag of a Lite Blox is nothing compare to the gauging prices Porsche asks for optional items, and that Mike pointed it out.
If you buy an RS, you better know that whatever upgrade you’re gonna make to the car is gonna cost you some pretty penny.
As far as the anti-theft app. I used it several times and works flawless, not sure about cracking the system. Maybe consider about removing the password on the battery?
With this kind of tech, I would assume the folks at Lite Blox can install a GPS unit that traces the battery/ car in case it gets stolen.
I would jsut like to say that in no way am I putting down the battery. I do have questions about how the security features work because security through obscurity is not security at all. Take your example, you have used the security and it has worked flawless, but have you tried to find its flaws? have you tried to make it fail?
You say the password is on the battery, can you change it through the app? that’s a big one there as hard-coded passwords are a big no-no, Are the passwords unique per battery? is there some sort of correlation between the password and the signal beacon that Bluetooth sends out? These are all things that need to be considered for good security.
Also if the batteries don’t have a GPS chip in them then it cant be added to any of the batteries already sold. That and GPS doesn’t really work once the car is inside a shipping container.
The thing is that no one would ever let a battery manufacturer claim that their battery gave you 50% more horsepower as that is an easy enough to test. Security claims are much harder for the general public to assess and there are a lot of products out there that claim to be secure but are definitely not. Those are much more complicated claims to evaluate but I believe that if they are being used to sell a product then they need to be evaluated as well so that consumers can make informed choices about how they spend their money. I mean no ill will, I just have a lot of questions that my history has taught me to ask.
Autozone? Sure, why not? It’s just a 12v battery in a street car in the end, and the Autozone one will do everything Porsche AG requires of a battery. Exotic car does not require an exotic battery as shown by what this car came with from the factory.
Except it weighs 42 lbs more.
True, and that can make all the difference when you are bench racing for pinks!
It’s easier to talk than to do something too.
The alternative would be a normal battery with no security at all so this battery would not be worse than stock in that respect. I also think that thieves would not be waiting to ambush you with this battery because not too many cars would have them presumably. I would think they would probably be trying to sniff out alarm codes and things like that.
Think of security like castle walls and any form of communication to be a gate in those walls. Is the password to use that gate changable (can the bluetooth passphrase be changed)? If i know one gates password can i go to a different castle and figure out entrance to their gate (are the pass phrases the same or algorithmic-ally linked to information being broadcast)? Can the gate design be updated if someone discovers a flaw in the gate can the gate design be changed (can the firmware on the battery be updated)?
Sometimes adding “security” actually makes you more vulnerable as you have added an extra gate that then gives nefarious people more opportunities to get in. To continue with my analogy, you are right that not too many castles will have this gate put in, but the ones that do will be fancy, expensive castles with possibly more riches inside. Who drives high dollar cars? celebrities, politicians, rich people who also have other things on them that are incredibly valuable as well. So depending on how the security is done, this could actually be worse than stock, The company could have also put out a light weight battery with out the security features and even left the battery off storage feature as a physical switch (that is more secure because it is already behind a proven security measure, the car locks).
To use a real world example, have you ever been in an elevator that requires a RFID badge, key or key card to get to certain floors? did you know that service mode or fire mode will bypass that security? did you also know that in a city the keys for fire mode in multiple buildings can be keyed alike or very similar. Meaning that if a nefarious actor gets the key for one building then they get access to all sorts of other buildings, and that’s not to mention how easy it is to pick some of those locks. So while that system may stop the average joe from going someone where they aren’t supposed to be, it makes it easier for a determined malicious person to get in specific targeted places where they shouldn’t be.
I cant tell you if these security features are good or bad but i do have to ask questions to determine which one it is. It may make it harder for a run of the mill theif but it could also make it easier for someone with a specific target already, especially if they become popular (meaning more and more expensive sports cars have them). Security through obscurity is not security at all because once the veil of obscurity is pierced then it becomes a vulnerability and not a security feature.
I am not trying to argue with you but one can not determine if this feature in an otherwise amazing product (and i think that it is great in respect to every other advertised feature) adds security or not with out knowing how that security is implemented. Given the repeated and constant security failures that we see every day, I just cant believe a company when they say that they are adding security with out that being verified by an impartial 3rd party.
Just so I can be clear about the risks let me ask you these questions. So at the most all a hacker could do to the car differently to steal it if the battery is in anti-theft mode is turn on the battery right? Or turn off the car while it is being driven to make the driver vulnerable to a conventional robbery attempt? The battery is not connected to the car so it would then be a car with the battery on or off right? To bypass the cars native security system would require additional nonrelated hacking right? If this is true, how does this makes your car more vulnerable to thieves, even sophisticated pros have another layer of hacking to deal with right? I am having trouble understanding this point, not the fact that it could be possible to hack the battery.
That’s very presumptuous to say having a good car makes you insecure. Perhaps you are bitter.
Haha, yes Mike, of course I am bitter! And poor to boot! Perhaps the insecure phrase was a step too far. I’m sure there are lots (perhaps even a majority) of confident wealthy folks who are genuinely great people. I’m just tired of seeing these feats of engineering used as ornaments of wealth and status.
I should probably check myself because if it weren’t for this type of buyer the economics probably would not be there for these cars to get designed and produced in the first place. Also not fair of me to think that MotoIQ is of a similar motorsports bent that I am. Please carry on.
First of all, it’s fascinating an article on a battery has elicited this many comments.
Second, I can’t wait for the day when lead acid batteries in cars is a distant memory. Or you go to poke around on a classic car and go “This one hasn’t had a lithium ion battery conversion yet?” One day.
Third, it is my understanding that the Weissach Package includes (among other things) a carbon fiber roof and magnesium wheels (optional but included in the $31k price you quoted). The roof saves weight from the highest possible place in the car, having a relatively large effect on CG height. The wheels saves 25 lbs of rotational AND unsprung weight. I am not saying that the Weissach Package is a good deal or worth the money. This car is far into the “diminishing returns” area. However, you (correctly) constantly preach removing the highest weight you can, reducing unsprung weigh and reducing rotating mass. The fact that you ignored these things for your argument in this article is irritating. It’s not an apples to apples comparison and I think your readers are smart enough to see through that.
The regular RS has a pretty light magnesium roof, the carbon one shaves 1.1 lbs off the top, not too much, more of a cosmetic and marketing thing. Lighter carpet and some minor interior stuff shave off another pound. I think most of the weight savings on the car side comes from the carbon sway bars, something like 11-12 lbs. The battery makes a bigger difference in CG height and weight distribution that any of these parts. The Weissach package wheels are not part of the car package but yet another option. These probably make a difference due to the compound effect of unsprung and rotating weight but it would be interesting to see if the stiffness is affected. I am not sure if you have seen Billy Johnson’s study of that on a GT3.
https://motoiq.com/tested-carbon-revolution-carbon-fiber-wheels/
There is a chance that ultralight wheels can make the car slower.
I didn’t realize the stock roof is magnesium. You’re correct, it’s mostly for show and the weight savings would be negligible.
However, the price you quoted in the article for the Weissach Package includes the forged magnesium wheels. I’m using https://www.motortrend.com/news/2018-porsche-911-gt3-rs-weissach-package/ as my source. $18k gets you the Weissach Package, $31k gets you the Weissach Package and the forged magnesium wheels. All I am trying to say is it is unfair for you to compare sprung weight to unsprung+rotating weight without any mention of the fact.
I have read Billy Johnson’s article, but I don’t believe he had any data on magnesium wheels. I couldn’t find anything readily online about it. I would assume Porsche would know what they’re doing as far as wheel deflection. And I believe forged magnesium wheels are used for Formula 1. Again, I assume they know what they’re doing.
Well, they did design the M96 engine.
The best argument when people tell me that modifying Porsche is stupid because Porsche engineers know what they do ahah.
Hi,
I`m interresting in one of this batteris For 991 GT3RS.2
Can you ship it .o Sweden?
Price?
Delivery time?
Best regards
Sten Carlsson
+46705123469
Interested in LB26xx battery for Porsche 996. Please advise, price, shipping etc
Please follow the links in the story, we do not sell parts we are a web magazine.
Hey Mike. Just wondering if you guys will do a long term usage update on this. Was looking at getting one for my car but I have also come across some posts in forums that have had terrible problems with these batteries and the company itself. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
It’s still working great.