Focus on…

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Battery management systems

For decades, the battery management system (BMS) served a relatively straightforward purpose: protect the battery from operating outside its safe limits, estimate its SoC, and ensure that the vehicle could be trusted to start and stop reliably...

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Non-destructive testing

Non-destructive testing (NDT) is going through a fundamental transformation. Combining NDT methods with AI, digital twins and sensing techniques is creating the opportunity for closed-loop analysis of defects, thereby allowing...

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Thermal interface materials

A thermal interface material (TIM) has a deceptively simple job: to fill the microscopic air gaps between a heat source and a heat sink and allow thermal energy to flow. For decades, this was typically done by a...

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Hairpin & advanced windings

The shift from traditional round-wire windings to hairpin winding technology represents one of the most significant leaps in EV motor efficiency. By replacing bundles of copper wire with rigid, precision-engineered bars, manufacturers...

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Battery safety

Peter Donaldson samples the many layers of defence involved in ensuring battery safety Lithium-ion batteries present a fundamental engineering trade-off. The technology offers the high energy density that makes e-mobility possible, yet it contains inherent chemical instability – to varying degrees depending on chemistry – that, when triggered, can unleash a self-sustaining cascade of heat, gas and fire.

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Battery manufacturing

Battery manufacturing is one of the most complex industrial challenges of the e-mobility era. The gap between laboratory perfection and mass-production reality is where ambitious projects succeed or fail. This article brings together a number of expert voices from across the battery manufacturing value chain: welding, dry coating chemistry, coating and filling, factory automation, cell assembly, digital automation, laser optics, digital twins and data and also X-ray inspection.

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Production tests

Nick Flaherty examines how reliable, functional testing is crucial for manufacturers aiming to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving EV market The latest report from the International Energy Agency forecasts that electric car sales will exceed 20 million units in 2025, representing over 25% of global car sales. The report also states that by 2030, EVs are expected to account for more than 40% of all car sales globally.

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Battery pack adhesives

Battery pack adhesives must do much more than simply hold things together. Peter Donaldson reports.

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Wide bandgap materials

The shift to wide bandgap materials isn’t just an incremental upgrade, it is the fundamental enabler for the next generation of high-performance, long-range EVs, reports Nick Flaherty Wide bandgap (WBG) materials – primarily silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), but also gallium oxide (Ga2O3 or GaO) – are defined by their electronic bandgap energy, which is significantly higher than that of traditional silicon at 1.1 eV. Specifically, SiC and GaN possess bandgaps of approximately 3.2 and 3.4 eV, respectively, with GaO at 4.5–4.9 eV.