Carrar says testing at its R&D lab showed its Two-Phase Immersion Architecture can prevent thermal propagation between high-energy NMC pouch cells even under extreme failure conditions. In the test, a 72 Ah pouch cell was driven into thermal failure with a temperature rise exceeding 15 °C per second, and the triggered cell rose above 800 °C, while an adjacent cell remained at about 50 °C, according to the company.
The company says the result demonstrates complete prevention of cascade failure—a major safety hurdle for both battery energy storage systems and EV packs. Carrar’s approach submerges battery modules in a dielectric fluid engineered to boil at specific temperatures. Under normal operation, the company says the phase-change cooling keeps cell temperatures uniform and avoids hotspots; under failure conditions, the fluid’s latent heat absorption is meant to soak up thermal spikes quickly enough to stop propagation.
Carrar is also tying the result to tightening safety standards. The company says its architecture exceeds the requirements of China’s GB 38031-2025 standard, which will require zero fire and zero explosion for two hours following thermal runaway, as well as the direction of UL9540A:2025 for stationary storage. Carrar says its system does this passively, without requiring sensors, suppression systems or other active intervention.
“We’re seeing the triggered cell hit catastrophic temperatures while adjacent cells remain near ambient,” said VP Product Bar Ben Horin. CEO Eitam Friedman said the company expects its BESS systems to be commercially ready by the end of 2026 and that it is already working with automotive partners on multi-year programs.
Tapes can simplify complex processes, support robotic assembly, reduce scrap, and more.
By Max VanRaaphorst
Globally, more than 60 million EVs are now on the road. It’s a number that might have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. It underscores how EV OEMs have moved beyond needing only to prove feasibility, and must now prove manufacturability — the ability to scale-up rapidly while maximizing quality, safety and profits.
The same holds true for EV and e-mobility batteries. While the technology continues to evolve, the path to marketability now goes through manufacturing. Winning providers will be those that can optimize their production processes, automate effectively and produce high quality at a low cost.
That path may seem daunting. But there are strategies available that can result in greater quality and throughput. One such strategy is materials selection, particularly that of pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) tapes.
What do PSA tapes offer for battery design?
PSA tapes are a mature, sophisticated and diverse technology used in a wide range of industries, including automotive and transportation. Depending on its configuration, a tape may feature one or two adhesives that bond to a substrate upon the application of light pressure, a facestock that provides dimensional stability and other qualities, and a liner that protects the adhesive until its application.
These versatile tapes can easily fit in tight spaces while helping limit a pack’s overall mass. They offer clean and repeatable application and are typically compatible with automated production processes.
From a manufacturing perspective, such benefits may make PSA tapes an enhanced alternative choice to liquid adhesives, which require cure time and have variance in their application; and mechanical fasteners, which increase part count and mass.
Common PSA tape configurations
PSA tapes can also be customized to provide qualities that go beyond simple bonding. Some examples: Electrically insulative film facestocks can enhance a system’s dielectric protection
strategy. Tapes combined with flame barrier materials, such as mica, can enhance thermal protection. Tapes laminated to thick foam facestocks can provide shock absorption for delicate components.
PSA tapes as a design-for-manufacturability solution
Importantly, PSA tapes can be customized not just for the end use, but for specific challenges of the manufacturing process itself. This is the essence of DFM.
The fact is, battery manufacturing is highly complex at multiple levels. Cell, module and pack production involve different substrates, tight tolerances and layered assemblies, and electrical and thermal management requirements. Wasteful production steps and damage to fragile battery components are pain points, and may be frequent occurrences for manufacturers using traditional bonding and assembly methods.
How PSA tapes address pain points and optimize battery production
Enter PSA tapes. Here are just a few ways this DFM solution can help optimize battery production.
PSA tapes reduce process steps, production line costs and complexity
Manufacturing optimization with PSA tape solutions
The use of PSA tapes eliminates some of the time-and effort-intensive steps associated with traditional bonding and fastening methods. As mentioned earlier, tapes require no cure time. Once adhered, a taped part can move immediately to the next step of the production process. This saves time and eliminates the need for equipment such as curing ovens, helping manage CAPEX.
Avery Dennison next-gen Volt ToughTM Stretch offers a prime example of these benefits.
Estimated cost comparison: Use of powder coating vs. next-gen Volt Tough Stretch
The product is a PSA-tape-based dielectric insulation solution engineered for adhering to flat metal blanks. Those blanks can then be cut and stamped into whatever shapes are needed for the battery component’s design. The “stretchability” engineered into the tape prevents the dielectric barrier from tearing or cracking during those processes.
Traditional dielectric strategies, such as powder coating, can add complexity and cost to a production process whether done in-house or outsourced. As a PSA tape, next-gen Volt Tough Stretch can more easily be applied inline, manually or robotically, to promote simplicity and cost savings.
PSA tapes support automation and robotic application
By using tape constructions tailored to their application and automation methods, e-mobility manufacturers can design efficient and effective automated processes. PSA tapes support multiple automation strategies, including pick-and-place of die-cut parts, single-pass liner removal and application, and wide-web lamination for large components such as cooling plates.
Because PSA tape bonding occurs immediately upon contact with a substrate, components are less likely to shift during transfer between stations. This is particularly important for layered battery assemblies, where misalignment can lead to electrical clearance issues, uneven thermal interfaces and downstream assembly failures.
Dimensional stability is another plus for PSA tapes applied robotically. Film-based carriers such as PET resist stretching during robotic handling and placement, improving positional accuracy at high application speeds. Where assemblies require conformity around edges or uneven surfaces, nonwoven or foam carriers can be used to balance flexibility with automation compatibility.
For battery producers focused on scale, PSA tapes engineered for robotic application can help stabilize production lines, improve yield and increase overall equipment effectiveness.
PSA tapes help manage scrap rates and promote quality
Many battery materials are delicate and difficult to handle, making them especially vulnerable to damage during high-speed assembly. PSA tapes can be customized to help battery manufacturers limit these materials’ contribution to waste and scrap rates.
A common challenge occurs during liner removal. Materials such as mica or ceramic paper can tear, delaminate or fracture if subjected to excessive stress and forces.
PSA tape constructions that pair controlled-release liners with appropriately balanced adhesive systems reduce the mechanical stress placed on these materials during automated or semi-automated removal. This results in fewer damaged parts entering downstream processes.
Manufacturers such as Avery Dennison can fine tune a liner’s removal force through approaches such as controlling the release formula (low, medium or high) and/or zone coating the adhesive.
In addition, tapes can be designed for compatibility with vision systems to support inline quality checks. Printed liners or pigmented adhesive systems allow automated equipment to verify part presence and placement before the assembly progresses further down the line. Identifying defects early allows for removal of noncompliant parts prior to the addition of value, thus reducing the total cost of scrap.
At scale, such incremental improvements compound. By reducing handling damage, misalignment and late-stage defects, PSA tapes optimized for battery manufacturing help improve overall yield while decreasing manufacturing costs.
Engineering PSA-tape-based DFM solutions for your production line
Printed liners aid robotic vision systems that perform inline quality checks
A logical first step in creating PSA-tape solutions for your manufacturing needs is to locate collaborators who can provide expertise and capabilities you may not have in-house. The industry is served by a variety of PSA tape manufacturers who can fulfill this role.
Some questions to consider as you vet tape manufacturers:
Does the manufacturer have experience and application expertise in the battery industry?
Does the manufacturer have the R&D capabilities to develop the solutions I need?
Does the manufacturer have the business appetite to develop customized solutions? (Not all do.)
Does the manufacturer have access to a network of additional companies, such as tape converters and functional material manufacturers, who may be crucial to my success?
Does the tape manufacturer provide ongoing support?
Ideally, this relationship begins early in your product design phase. This gives the tape manufacturer maximum leverage to develop solutions that work for your manufacturing process.
My company, Avery Dennison, collaborates with OEMs and suppliers to tailor PSA-tape-based solutions to specific cell, module, and pack designs. We offer a wide range of PSA-tape solutions for the e-mobility battery industry, and our portfolio is backed by extensive R&D capabilities.
About the author
Max VanRaaphorst is market manager for Energy Storage at Avery Dennison Materials Group North America. With a decade of technical, sales, and marketing experience in the adhesives and tapes field, Max strives to help OEMs and suppliers address design, manufacturing, and performance challenges in the fast-evolving energy storage segment.
CamMotive has opened a new battery testing lab in Cambridge, UK, with more than 800 high-current cell-cycling channels and the ability to deliver up to 800 A per cell. The company says the facility is aimed at speeding development and validation of next-generation batteries for automotive and other high-power applications.
According to CamMotive, the lab can cycle hundreds of large-format cells under controlled conditions, and is one of only a few UK facilities with comparable capacity and current capability. The company says the setup is designed to help OEMs and other developers gather the data needed for modeling, compliance work, performance optimization, lifespan analysis, and charging-strategy development.
The facility is also equipped with dynamic climatic chambers operating from -40 °C to +180 °C, process thermostats for thermal-management testing, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and swelling analysis. For larger hardware, CamMotive says it can test modules and packs at up to 1 MW. Beyond automotive cells, the company is targeting eVTOL, data center, and stationary energy storage applications.
“The launch of our new test facility marks the latest phase of CamMotive’s commitment to advancing battery technology and its applications,” said director Bruce Campbell. He said the company aims to support work ranging from early concept development to end-of-line validation.
Taseko Mines says it has harvested the first copper cathodes from the newly completed commercial production facility at its Florence Copper operation in Arizona, marking what the company calls the first new US greenfield copper production since 2008.
The company had announced startup of Florence Copper’s electrowinning plant in late February. Now it says the first cathodes have been harvested, an early milestone in ramping the site toward its nameplate capacity of 85 million pounds per year of LME Grade A copper. Over a 22-year mine life, Taseko expects Florence to produce at least 1.5 billion pounds of copper.
Taseko also says Florence Copper is the first greenfield site globally to use its ISCR process, which it describes as a low-cost copper production method with environmental advantages over conventional mining. If the site reaches planned output, Taseko says it will become the third-largest copper cathode producer in the US.
“Producing LME Grade A copper cathode for America’s manufacturing sector, including automotive, semiconductor, defense/aerospace and AI data centers, will meaningfully strengthen US manufacturing and supply chain security,” said President and CEO Stuart McDonald. He added that all copper produced at Florence will remain in the US.
Cary, North Carolina has deployed a Pierce Volterra plug-in hybrid fire truck. The city adopted its first light-duty electrified vehicles a decade ago, and chose to electrify this heavy-duty truck in order to improve public health and air quality, firefighter working conditions, and long-term fleet resilience.
The Pierce Volterra features an Oshkosh parallel-hybrid drivetrain. Both travel and pumping can be powered by batteries or by the internal combustion engine.
The Environmental Defense Fund is using the city’s deployment as a case study to demonstrate how light-duty plug-in vehicle adoption can scale into heavy-duty, mission-critical applications. EDF’s case study is designed to show municipalities how focused deployment, strong cross-sector partnerships and leading-by-example planning can facilitate EV implementation.
EDF’s recommendations based on the group’s electrified fleet case studies:
Start with applications in which impact and feasibility align for your fleet to transition to plug-in vehicles.
Strong partnerships make the process easier and build relationships that facilitate future additions. Cary’s project was enabled through collaboration among the town’s leadership, fire department, utility, OEMs and other stakeholders.
A targeted deployment builds knowledge, confidence and momentum, and provides a framework for other municipal fleets to learn from. EDF’s case study is designed to show how other fleets can replicate Cary’s planning and incorporate coordination into their initial research and transition plans.
Aptera Motors (NASDAQ: SEV) was originally founded in 2006. However, while other EV startups from that area endeavored (and mostly failed) to follow a three-step iteration from a low-volume luxury vehicle to an affordable mass-market EV, Aptera took an entirely different approach. The goal was simply to build the most efficient EV possible with available technology. To that end, the Aptera features a super-aerodynamic design, lightweight materials and integrated solar cells.
It’s been a long road, but the first Apteras are now rolling off the company’s validation assembly line—a major milestone marking the transition from hand-built validation vehicles to a structured assembly line process.
The line consists of 14 dedicated stations, where vehicles are assembled by a team of technicians. Vehicles produced on the low-volume validation line will be used for various testing programs, including thermal validation, brake performance, and “some destructive testing” (what fun!). The line is being used to refine the installation process for every major vehicle system, allowing the team to optimize build sequences, improve assembly procedures and refine station layouts as preparation continues for the next phase of series volume assembly.
“The completion of the first vehicle off our low-volume assembly line is a significant achievement for the entire company,” said Steve Fambro, Co-CEO of Aptera. “These first vehicles will be used to complete the key tests and optimization required to sell our first vehicles to customers.”
Vehicles will continue rolling off the low-volume validation assembly line in the coming weeks as Aptera expands its validation fleet and advances through required testing and certification milestones.
Aptera’s Launch Edition has a 44 kWh battery pack consisting of 2,304 NMC cylindrical cells. It’s expected to deliver 400 miles of range. The integrated solar cells are expected to provide up to 40 miles of driving range per day, reducing the need for regular charging. The car can also be charged via the usual J1772 (Level 2) and CCS (DC fast) charging connectors.
Aptera has nearly 50,000 vehicle reservations on the books, representing over $2 billion in potential revenue, and aims to begin delivering vehicles to customers later this year.
Renesas has added a new low-end member to its RH850 automotive MCU family with the 28 nm RH850/U2C, aimed at chassis and safety systems, battery management systems, lighting, motor control and other ASIL D applications.
The 32-bit MCU combines four RH850 CPU cores running at up to 320 MHz—including two lockstep cores—and up to 8 MB of on-chip flash. Renesas says it is designed as a migration path for developers using RH850/P1x or RH850/F1x devices, helping them move toward newer vehicle E/E architectures.
A big part of the pitch is communications support. The RH850/U2C includes interfaces for Ethernet 10BASE-T1S, Ethernet TSN at 1 Gbps/100 Mbps, CAN-XL and I3C, while maintaining compatibility with more familiar automotive interfaces such as CAN-FD, LIN, UART, CXPI, I²C, I²S and PSI5. Renesas says that mix should ease phased migration toward domain- and zone-based architectures.
The company also emphasizes functional safety up to ASIL D, ISO 26262 compliance and support for ISO/SAE 21434 cybersecurity requirements, along with hardware accelerators for cryptographic processing. “The RH850/U2C combines performance, a rich feature set and compliance with key industry standards to meet the requirements of next-generation ECUs,” said Renesas VP Satoshi Yoshida.
Hoenle Adhesives has introduced Vitralit CIPG 60200, a UV-curable cured-in-place gasket material for automotive and e-mobility electronics housings. The company is positioning the blue fluorescent polyacrylate as an alternative to conventional solid gaskets and FIPG silicone systems for complex 3D sealing geometries.
Hoenle says the material can be dispensed precisely with adhesive valves and programmable robots, then rapidly cured under UV light at 365 nm or 405 nm, or with gas-discharge lamps, enabling short cycle times and immediate handling strength. Once cured, the gasket is designed to maintain sealing force over time, with the company citing a compression set of 15% after 24 hours at 150 °C and an operating range from -40 °C to above 150 °C.
The company also says Vitralit CIPG 60200 resists common automotive media including engine oil, ATF, and 50:50 water/glycol mixtures, while offering low outgassing and UL 94 HB compatibility. Hoenle is targeting applications such as ECUs, battery disconnect units, on-board chargers, and cell module controllers.
A notable angle is serviceability: Hoenle says the cured gasket can be reused after disassembly, allowing housings to be opened and resealed without replacing the gasket. The company says that can reduce service cost and waste in maintenance and repair scenarios.
Wieland Electric will showcase its new podis power bus system for EV infrastructure at the upcoming EV Charging Summit and Expo 2026 in Las Vegas.
Wieland’s podis is designed to simplify, accelerate and future-proof EV charging installations. The podis decentralized power distribution system offers a modular, plug-and-play alternative to traditional hard-wired installations. It’s aimed at commercial, industrial, fleet and parking applications.
Using podis eliminates complex conduit runs. Wieland says it can be installed in a third the time compared with pre-assembled, pluggable components, and can reduce labor costs by up to a third compared to conventional wiring methods.
Wieland’s podis delivers reliable power distribution with high-current capacity. It offers scalable design that can grow with EV demand, and includes flexible layouts optimized for various applications, including parking garages, fleet depots and multi-unit residential developments.
Wieland’s podis system will be on display at booth 1402 at the upcoming EV Charging Summit & Expo, March 17–19, 2026 at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino.
Battery electrode manufacturer LiCAP Technologies has announced a major expansion of its operations. The company recently secured a 40,500-square-foot industrial facility in Sacramento, tripling its work space.
The new facility will serve as LiCAP’s dedicated manufacturing hub, enabling scaled production of its dry electrode platform and supporting development for energy storage and data center applications.
LiCAP’s proprietary Activated Dry Electrode (ADE) technology eliminates the toxic solvents required for the traditional wet slurry electrode production process. The company says its dry process saves energy, cost and factory space, as well as improving electrode performance. (Read our in-depth interview with LiCAP President Richard Qiu.)
LiCAP has introduced a new ultracapacitor system assembly line. The company says its ultracapacitors deliver more than one million charge-discharge cycles and exceed 15 years of calendar year life, reducing maintenance intervals and total cost of ownership. The ultracapacitor system line will focus on grid stabilization projects, data centers and other energy storage applications.
“This milestone reflects the market’s strong appetite for cleaner, more efficient energy storage technologies,” said President Richard Qiu. “Our new facility gives us the scale to support commercial partners and deliver energy storage solutions that meet industrial reliability standards.”
