EV battery diagnostics specialist AVILOO has begun offering its AVILOO Battery Warranty in an additional 14 European markets, extending its reach to 24 countries.
As the used EV market in Europe expands, buyers need dependable information about the health of a particular vehicle’s battery. Manufacturer-reported health figures are neither independently verified nor standardized, AVILOO explains.
AVILOO’s Battery Warranty is issued as a standalone document, separate from the company’s existing independent battery certificate.
For each vehicle, an individual State of Health (SoH) floor is calculated using AVILOO’s proprietary diagnostics database. The calculation sets the minimum SoH the battery must maintain at 20,000 km over the one-year warranty period. Dealers can offer this warranty to buyers as a credible, independently underwritten selling point, without carrying the risk themselves.
Buyers receive a one-year warranty period during which they can carry out an AVILOO FLASH Test—a three-minute, manufacturer-neutral diagnostic that assesses real battery capacity, thermal management, and charging capability against original factory specifications. If the battery’s SoH falls below the calculated threshold during the warranty period, the buyer receives a fixed compensation payment, which is set locally for each market.
AVILOO partners include Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and Porsche: leasing companies Ayvens and Arval; and auction groups BCA and Cox Automotive.
“The AVILOO Battery Warranty raises the used electric vehicle market to a new level,” said Marcus Berger, CEO of AVILOO. “This builds trust and gives dealers and buyers right across Europe a level of certainty that simply has not existed before. We are seeing enormous appetite from both dealers and consumers, in our established markets and our newest ones alike.”
Silicone Solutions for Next-Generation EV Battery Applications
How are EV battery requirements evolving, and what materials will enable the next generation of electric vehicles?
The electric vehicle industry is evolving at an unprecedented pace. Driven by increasing demands for longer driving ranges, ultra-fast charging, enhanced safety, lower costs, improved sustainability, and greater battery circularity, EV battery technologies are undergoing significant transformation. This webinar will explore the major trends shaping the future of electric vehicles and battery systems, and how these evolving requirements are driving innovation in materials and battery design.
Participants will gain insights into the key market, technology, and regulatory drivers influencing battery development, including the evolution of UN R100 requirements related to thermal runaway and thermal propagation, increasing expectations for battery repairability and recyclability, and the industry’s continued push toward lighter, safer, and more energy-efficient battery packs.
Discover how advanced silicone technologies help address critical challenges in sealing, thermal protection, thermal management, and battery reliability.
Attendees will learn how material selection has become a critical enabler for meeting the evolving demands of the EV industry and how silicone technologies can help address multiple engineering challenges across the battery system.
ETEK Electric manufactures a variety of DC fast chargers, ranging from a 20-60 kW compact unit (the EKDC1 series) to a 240-600 kW split system (the EKDC6). All products support OCPP 1.6J, and all offer CCS1, CCS2, GB/T and CHAdeMO connector options.
The EKDC2 is a floor-standing dual-connector charging station designed for commercial, fleet and EPC applications. Power options range from 60 to 240 kW. Input voltage ranges from AC 380-415 V (3P+N+PE, 50/60 Hz), and output voltage ranges from 50-1,000 V DC. The unit supports Plug & Charge, RFID, Ethernet, and optional 4G and WiFi. Safety features include overcurrent, short-circuit, ground, surge, voltage, frequency and temperature protection.
The big daddy of ETEK’s range is the EKDC6, a 240-600 kW split (distributed) charging system that centralizes power in one cabinet and supplies 4-12 charging points. It’s designed for public charging hubs, fleet depots, and any projects that may need to expand the number of dispensers without installing separate high-power cabinets.
Each dispenser can be configured with one or two connectors and delivers up to 250 kW and 250 A. Each dispenser includes a 7-inch LCD screen. The system includes all the same safety features, and supports all the same charging modes and standards as the company’s smaller systems.
Battery electric vehicle (BEV) architectures continue to evolve. Higher charging rates, greater stored energy, bidirectional power flow and tighter packaging can increase the demands placed on high-voltage DC circuit protection.
Traditional protection architectures that coordinate contactors, fuses and pyrotechnic devices were developed for earlier BEV platforms. In some applications they remain effective, but higher fault energy, faster fault development and greater system complexity may reduce available design margin.
This article outlines how BEV fault behavior is changing, where conventional protection strategies may face increasing constraints and why some next-generation architectures may benefit from a more integrated and resettable approach.
BEV architectures are transferring higher energy at higher rates
Current BEV platforms differ significantly from earlier generations. Several trends are changing electrical architecture:
Higher charge rates driven by fast-charging requirements
More stored energy to support longer range
More compact battery packaging that increases thermal and electrical density
Bidirectional power flow (V2L, V2H and V2G) that expands fault scenarios
Higher system voltages, including 400 V and 800 V platforms and beyond
Taken together, these trends increase the amount of energy transferred through compact systems. Protection and switching devices may therefore be required to operate under higher stress, shorter response windows and a broader range of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) fault conditions.
HVDC fault behavior is changing
HVDC faults are not new. What has changed is the context in which they occur. Higher stored energy, faster charging and denser packaging can allow faults to escalate more quickly. In some architectures, engineers must manage not only higher fault current, but also faster fault development, shorter decision windows and greater energy transfer in the first milliseconds of an event, including:
Rapid fault-current rise
Increased difficulty extinguishing DC arc energy
Reduced time available for protection decisions
Higher consequence of misclassification or delayed response
As system energy and charging power increase, some applications may need to consider short-circuit currents in the 20 kA to 30 kA range or higher. At the same time, normal fast-charging current may move closer to levels that reduce the margin between nominal operation and fault response.
This can narrow the operating window for protection devices. In these conditions, devices may need to handle a wider range of operating and fault scenarios, including:
Continuous high current during charging
Rapid interruption of high fault current
Predictable operation during transients, signal errors, communication loss and auxiliary failure
Figure 2. Higher stored energy, faster charging and denser packaging can allow faults to escalate more quickly.
Constraints in conventional protection architectures
Fuse and contactor architectures
Conventional BEV protection depends on sequential coordination:
Detection by the BMS and sensors
Switching via contactors
Protection via fuses
This model assumes enough time for detection, signaling and handoff between components. As operating current and charging power rise, that margin can shrink. Under these conditions, it may become increasingly difficult to maintain reliable sequencing across the entire range of expected scenarios, and several limitations become evident.
Coordination gaps across detection, switching and interruption functions
Contactors may not be optimized to interrupt high-energy DC faults on their own
Potential for contact welding and degradation of isolation performance under severe fault conditions
In some cases, fuse response may not align with faster fault dynamics
Reduced design margin as system voltage, current and stored energy increase
These considerations do not necessarily indicate a design deficiency. In many cases, they reflect architectures operating closer to the limits assumed during earlier design cycles.
Figure 3. Fuses and contactors require reliable sequencing, which may become more difficult to maintain across the full range of expected conditions.
Pyrotechnic protection approaches
Pyrotechnic devices can address some fuse-coordination issues by forcing the circuit open. Depending on the implementation, they may also introduce a different set of constraints.
Dependence on an external trigger: In many designs, operation depends on a trigger signal from another system
One-shot operation: Following activation, service intervention and component replacement may be required
Faster trigger requirements: Future battery systems may require response times measured in hundreds of microseconds, depending on architecture and fault scenario
Additional BMS complexity and associated cost
Potential for nuisance activation: If evaluation windows become very short or system inputs are ambiguous
As fault energy increases, designers may need to balance earlier intervention against the risk of acting on incomplete information.
Figure 4. Pyro fuses and contactors can address some fuse-coordination issues; however, the protection gap is increasing with faster charging demands.
Protection performance is increasingly architecture-dependent
In earlier EV platforms, circuit protection was largely a component-level choice. Engineers selected contactors, fuses or pyrotechnic devices by rating, then coordinated them with timing margins and external control logic. If baseline requirements were met, many combinations could be made to work. For some modern BEV architectures, that approach may no longer provide sufficient margin on its own.
Protection performance can depend on how detection, switching, interruption, communication and power availability interact under severe conditions. When those functions are not aligned by design, component ratings alone may not be enough to achieve the desired level of protection performance.
Circuit protection is increasingly determined by system architecture, not only by individual component ratings. The protection concept influences fault response, subsystem dependencies, recovery capability and vehicle availability.
A protection architecture intended for future BEV platforms should:
Accommodate higher voltage, current and stored energy
Integrate detection, switching and protection functions where appropriate
Provide predictable response across the defined fault envelope
Maintain safe operation with limited dependence on external trigger chains
Minimize dependence on single-use protection elements where feasible
Permit recovery after non-catastrophic events where appropriate
Integrated protection architectures
A different approach is emerging, one that integrates protection and switching into a single, self-contained device. Compared with architectures that coordinate separate contactors, fuses and pyrotechnic devices, integrated approaches eliminate coordination dependencies by design.
Combine detection, interruption and isolation functions within one device
Reduce dependence on BMS timing and external trigger chains in some implementations
Respond autonomously to defined high-energy DC fault conditions
Provide more consistent response across defined fault conditions in some application
Figure 5. By using electrodynamic forces during a fault, integrated devices like Breaktor can accelerate contact separation and help limit fault current. This reduces stress on downstream components and improves overall system robustness.
Figure 6. Integrated protection architectures combine detection, interruption and isolation in a single device to improve response consistency under high-energy HVDC fault conditions.
Resettable protection and serviceability
Many real-world fault events, like the following, are not catastrophic.
Charging station failures
Communication loss on auxiliary systems
Transient overcurrent events
Sensor misreads or misfires
With single-use protection approaches, these events can still lead to:
Stranded vehicles
Costly component replacement
Battery pack swaps
Unclear liability across vehicle, grid, and charging infrastructure
A resettable protection approach allows recovery from manageable events, support vehicle availability, and shift certain service actions to planned maintenance intervals. This can significantly reduce downtime and total cost of ownership
Figure 7. Resetable scenarios
Evaluation questions for engineering teams
As protection becomes more architecture-dependent, engineering teams should also reconsider how technologies and suppliers are evaluated. In practice, that means asking questions such as:
Which fault scenarios exist across the entire ecosystem—vehicle, grid and charging infrastructure?
How often will protection devices encounter these events in the real world?
Which faults should permit recovery, and which should not?
Is the protection function self-contained, or does it depend on external systems and timing?
Can the technology scale with future BEV energy levels?
Is system response predictable and repeatable?
Conclusion
BEV electrical systems are evolving in ways that challenge protection architectures developed for earlier platforms. As energy levels, charging power and system complexity increase, protection strategies may need to evolve as well.
Legacy approaches are facing increasing constraints, not because they are poorly designed, but because system assumptions are changing. In some applications, coordination gaps can widen, dependencies can increase and available reaction time can shrink.
Integrated, resettable protection technologies represent a shift from single-use components toward architecture-level safety functions. By simplifying certain aspects of fault response, reducing selected dependencies and enabling recovery in defined scenarios, they provide a more sustainable foundation for next-generation electric vehicle platforms.
Products featuring Breaktor circuit protection
Battery disconnect unit
The Battery disconnect unit (BDU) is designed to efficiently distribute power throughout the EV system. With the integration of Breaktor, the BDU provides improved quality and simplified architecture by combining current switching and resettable bidirectional short-circuit protection with fast actuation (up to 900V).
Enabling reduction of up to 15 components from the BDU assembly, Breaktor’s integrated coil driver, economizer, and sensing/triggering circuit reduce overall cost and complexity. Additionally, it’s self-triggering design, diagnostic electronics, and mirror contact help to ensure utmost safety and reliability.
FLEX power distribution unit
The next generation high-voltage intelligent FLEX power distribution unit (FLEX PDU) monitors and manages all power distributed to power electronics and provides central protection for the electrical system for hybrid, fuel cell and fully battery electric commercial vehicles. Fully customizable to meet a commercial vehicle’s specific requirements, the FLEX PDU can be integrated with Breaktor. This allows for integrated over-current protection for high power loads including traction inverters and DC fast charge.
Astemo Americas will add nearly 300,000 square feet of production and warehouse space at its two manufacturing plants in Berea, Kentucky, and spend more than $112 million to increase output of hybrid EV motors there.
The investment is the first phase of a multi-year program to increase hybrid EV powertrain component production across Astemo’s Kentucky sites, according to the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development.
The Berea plants build chassis and electric powertrain components. A separate Astemo plant in Harrodsburg, Kentucky produces electric powertrain and engine management systems.
Astemo Americas runs 23 manufacturing sites across the Americas, 12 of them in the United States, and is headquartered in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
The parent company is a joint venture between Hitachi, Honda Motor and JIC Capital. Charged has covered Astemo’s agreement to supply Honda with e-axles, a unit that combines a silicon carbide inverter, a square-wire motor and a gearbox. The company has also agreed to provide JATCO with inverters and motors for future Nissan EVs and PHEVs.
“Since we opened our first Kentucky plant in 1985, the Commonwealth of Kentucky has been a cornerstone of our US operations,” said Tim Clark, President and CEO of Astemo Americas.
Fleet operators need charging infrastructure that can keep pace with changing schedules, growing vehicle counts, and demanding operating environments. Join Lincoln Electric to explore how the Velion® line of DC fast chargers help fleets achieve reliable, flexible charging through dynamic power sharing and energy optimization. With the ability to charge up to four vehicles simultaneously, the Velion adapts to real-world fleet operations while maximizing charger utilization. We’ll discuss how intelligent charging works in practice, the benefits of rugged, fleet-focused design, and the importance of features such as BABA compliance and NEMA certification. Learn why reliability starts with smarter infrastructure.
Key takeaways from this webinar include:
Learn how dynamic power sharing helps maximize charging efficiency across your fleet.
Discover how to charge up to four vehicles at once while supporting changing operational demands.
Understand how intelligent energy optimization can improve fleet readiness and charger utilization.
See how a rugged, compliant charging solution can help support reliable, long-term fleet operations.
Off-road vehicle manufacturer Fering has chosen axial flux motors and inverters from Turntide Technologies for the parallel hybrid drivetrain in its vehicle platform, which Turntide says is built for long range, off-road capability and flexible deployment across multiple sectors. Turntide supplied an axial flux traction motor, a second motor for power generation, and the inverters that control them.
Turntide’s AF300S is rated at 73 kW of continuous power and 193.9 Nm of continuous torque, rising to 324 kW and 452.3 Nm in 20-second bursts, has a maximum speed of 8,000 rpm and operates at up to 850 VDC. Cooling takes place via an indirect liquid loop running water and ethylene glycol.
An axial flux machine runs its flux along the shaft axis rather than radially outward, so rotor and stator sit as parallel discs. The AF300S is 110 mm long and 333.8 mm in diameter and weighs 28.4 kg dry, a disc rather than the longer cylinder of a radial flux motor of similar output. That was Fering’s constraint, Turntide says: the propulsion system had to fit the vehicle’s existing architecture without compromising performance or capability.
Fering evaluated several axial flux motor suppliers during development, according to Turntide, and chose it for the performance and reliability of the motors and the support of its engineering team. Turntide’s application engineering group worked alongside Fering through vehicle integration and testing.
The two companies will now perform further drivetrain work, including development of a future electrified drive unit, and support for vehicle demonstrations and industry events.
“Fering’s vehicle platform is a good example of how hybridization can extend electrification into demanding vehicle applications,” said Brad Bell, Turntide’s Chief Commercial Officer.
