I am a car enthusiast without a garage. I park my beloved high-mileage manual E39 “Clive” in a city parking lot, with no ability to trickle charge the battery when it’s sidelined for long periods of time. There’s also a slow parasitic draw that I think is linked to the aftermarket system that I use to play music from my iPhone. My lazy solution has been to disconnect the battery when I know I’m going to put the BMW on ice for a while. If I forget to do it, I often have to jump my car’s battery, which is annoying when I’m in a hurry (the only time this seems to happen).
While I typically recommend a portable jump pack to anyone with an old car, I often find that when I need that particular bit of technology most, the portable jump pack is also dead. Some of this is my own fault, because I could either be more thoughtful about how I take care of the car or the battery, and just be better about disconnecting the battery. I know another E39 owner who has a little solar cell that trickle charges the battery, which probably isn’t going to work in a public lot, even if it’s a clever idea.
It’s gotten bad enough that I’ve had to lug the very heavy 12V battery out of the awkward trunk position in the BMW in order to take it to AutoZone for a quick refresh more than once. I hate doing this, which is why when aftermarket tools builder Ancel reached out to see if I’d test out its BS 200 Super Starter, I decided to be at least a little proactive and try to address the problem.
My expectations were low, as I’d never even heard of a super capacitor-based starter assistant before and was only vaguely aware of the company. The promise of using algorithms to “intelligently detect” the stress on a battery during startup and therefore surge energy to protect the battery sounded like silly marketing-speak to me.
It’s now been six weeks of putting this system through its paces and, other than a slightly tricky installation due to the E39’s rear-mounted battery, it’s honestly been the best upgrade to the car since I purchased it. The stress of not knowing what’ll happen when I turn the key is gone, leaving me room to get stressed about entirely new things.
What Is A ‘Super Starter’ Anyway?
The concept of a jump pack is fairly straightforward. Every version I’ve had is basically a large lithium-ion battery with an attachment for jumper cables. You attach the cables to a dead battery, turn the car on, and hope you charged your battery pack full enough to get the car to crank.
A ‘Super Starter’ battery booster is a little different. For one, the rectangular box doesn’t live in your glove compartment; it’s permanently attached to your battery and charges itself off the very thing it’s supposed to charge. Rather than being used temporarily in an emergency, it is there to always assist with the battery under load.
Because chucking another lithium-ion battery on top of your (probably) lead-acid battery isn’t a great idea, the BS200 Super Starter uses super capacitors instead of traditional cells. The benefits are the BS200 stores very little energy (just 2.3 watt-hours, compared to 60-80 for most jump packs), can recharge quickly, and can discharge a lot of power quickly. It’s also less susceptible to degradation due to large temperature changes. The downside is that you’re not going to be able to use this to charge your phone.
Installing It Is (Theoretically) Easy
The BS200 is clearly designed for use in a vehicle with a battery in the engine bay, which covers probably 90% of applications. My E39 is not most vehicles, and so the battery is in the trunk behind a panel. It’s also bolted into that little trunk well with a crossmember. Nerds!
When I went to install the BS200, I realized that not only would it not sit easily on that battery (which is the recommended placement), but I could not have it on the battery and close the access panel at the same time. My initial thought was just to run the negative and positive cables around that panel. That wouldn’t work because the cables, while appropriately long for an under-hood installation, are too short for my around-the-panel solution.
Out came the drill.
I ended up putting two holes in the panel and then running the cables through them. This also didn’t quite work as I couldn’t get the angle just right to keep the panel open enough to actually tighten the clamps around the battery terminals. Double nerds!
Eventually, I realized that I could line up the super starter dead in the middle and, with a socket wrench extension, I could juuuust tighten everything up and make it fit. While it takes up a small amount of trunk space (that I wasn’t using), it ended up being an elegant solution, and I’m happy with the way it looks.
The Big Test
Before installing the Super Starter, Ancel recommends charging it up fully using the USB-C port on the side. Because the supercapacitors need so little energy, this happened in less than an hour. The BMW had been sitting for a while, and I was worried it wouldn’t start at all. With a quick turn of the wrist, the glorious inline-six fired right up, although the app showed the battery was dead. Hmpf.
Just to be safe, I quickly updated the firmware in the BS200 (it connects to your phone via Bluetooth), and it showed the battery was at 20%, which was probably right:
The app is pretty good, gives you a history of battery performance, and has a button you can press to dump all the energy into the battery if it’s really, truly boned. Once the battery is in decent shape, the starter recharges itself. This wasn’t the big test, though. I knew I had a lot of trips coming up and was picking up a NISMO Armada, which meant the BMW would be sitting for a while.
I didn’t disconnect anything and, it turns out, I left my A/C on, my radio on, and did all the things I usually try not to do when I leave the BMW parked for a while. By the time I returned from my trip, it was over 100 degrees, and it was going to be a huge pain if the battery was dead.
As you can see in this Instagram video, the car started up just fine.
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I was greeted with my A/C pumping and Soundgarden coming out of the radio. I welcomed both as it was over 100 degrees in that parking lot. This was repeated a couple of weeks later when I went on another trip and left Clive parked for 10 days. I hopped in, turned the key, and drove off like nothing ever happened. In cold weather testing, Car and Driver found the Super Starter also performed well.
Should You Buy A Super Starter?
If you have a trickle charger or drive your car frequently enough, this probably isn’t a big issue for you. While Ancel claims that reducing the energy required by the battery to start/run your car could extend the life of your battery by years, I haven’t had it long enough to independently verify this. If you almost never deal with dead batteries, just get a lithium-ion jump kit and try to remember to keep it charged.
However, if you do end up in this situation frequently, it’s kind of a no-brainer. In the time I’ve had it to review it, the price of the BS 200 on Amazon has dropped $50 to $149. If you have a turbocharged 3.0-liter engine or a naturally-aspirated engine that displaces more than 3.5 liters, there’s the BS300 at $237.99, and for large trucks or big V8-powered cars the BS400 is $279.98.
In addition to reducing stress on the battery (and on the driver), I do like seeing in real time how long it takes to drive around and recharge the battery. When passengers are in the car, I’ll leave it up on the screen and feel like Paul Walker in The Fast and the Furious minus the manifold danger.
[Ed note: Ancel sent a pack to review. This review also includes affiliate links, which means we may get a commission if you buy one. – MH]
Ooooh! Battery Shark!
Could have used this on my old toy, which had some sort of parasitic draw similar to yours. I no longer have and my new car doesn’t have the problem, but I do have a teen about to start driving a family hand-me-down next year. Honestly, $200 might be worth the peace of mind.
Cool product, thanks for sharing.
Does Ancel state how long the capacitors stay charged? Matt’s experience is 10 days, and I wonder if that’s the outside limit before they self-discharge. I wonder if the self-discharge is faster or slower at freezing temperatures.
If parasitic loss is the root cause of Matt’s battery woes, then a better long-term solution is a kill switch, much like what are found in racing vehicles.
From my understanding of supercapacitors, they can’t really hold a charge much longer than 2 weeks. Heat also severely increases self discharge rate.
Modern cars don’t like having the ECU disconnected on a regular basis.
Neat little product!
We used a Big Boy version of this technology on our articulated buses for about 8 years until we switched to AGM batteries. Super Capacitors are excellent for this purpose.
Of note for those that live in hotter climates:
There have been reports of lithium packs igniting in very hot (>120 degree) car interiors.
So if you’re the type to carry a jump pack for the car it’s transported in, this thing Matt is talking about is probably safer. Capacitors are very resilient to temperature compared to lithium.
Goes out to his shitbox to remove the jumpack from the trunk.
Don’t worry… it’ll be fiiiiiine.
And if it isn’t, well you’ll have something to entertain the rest of us with!
Win-Win!!!
We already suffered through our near 100 heatwave earlier this week, so it’s fine now; but already brought it inside just in case. Sometimes I’m dumb.
Added one to my cart for my next Amazon order, as the little solar charger isn’t cutting it on my Lx.
I have trickle chargers hooked up to my portable propane generator and to a sump pump battery backup. I wonder if this is a solution for those too. Maybe not, since the battery only gets turned on in an emergency, so likely wouldn’t keep the gadget charged?
Why not both? Solar should be able to keep those capacitors tippy top.
Which author is using little solar panels as a trickle charger for this purpose?
And how do they compare?
While I can’t speak directly to your question, I use solar panel maintainers on multiple vehicles and have been quite satisfied with the performance. Even keeping the solar panel inside the car sitting on the dash seems to provide enough energy to keep a mediocre at best condition battery working well for me.
Sadly I did not have the same experience with my 03 Civic Lx, so I’m gonna give this a try. It’s likely that battery is completely shot, and the smartphone app should work on the Android Head Unit I installed in the thing, so I’m hoping to get better visibility into the current state of affairs.
the battery condition monitor in the app is pretty cool. I can’t argue with that at all. Honestly, I see nothing wrong with a belt and suspenders approach to this, unless the super start thing doesn’t allow for it. Do both!
Yeah I’ll plug the solar back in once I have better visibility in the battery charge state, last I jumped started it I had to FORCE jump it, so I know that battery is stuggling.
Moral of the story is I need to drive it more.
Which solar maintainer worked for you? I tried one and it did nothing, even connected straight to the battery terminals.
I do’nt know what brand they are. They were about $40 each on Amazon, wire in directly to the battery terminal, and come with a small controller and a solar panel. There are a couple of different two wire quick disconnect points, so its easy to leave wired to the battery and just disconnect the charging system when I use the car.
I’m about 98.6% sure Mercedes is using one or two of them.
That was Mercedes, I bought one for my seldom driven Highlander and it has been good so far.