Increased battery density is the endgame of all cutting-edge battery design, improvements cannot come at the expense of safety or cost limitations. The question then becomes how to push the envelope in a safe and cost-effective way. Monitoring the state-of-health of cells is at the top of the list of considerations.
Accurately measuring ambient factors like temperature and voltage provides critical data to the BMS. For years, this could be done through discreet wiring, though this method was inefficient, and the quality was lacking. In today’s designs, flexible printed circuit boards (FPCs) are replacing discrete wiring. These FPC-based systems are the newest generation of cell contacting systems. They simultaneously bring down the cost of pack manufacturing and improve reliability in manufacturing and data harnessing.
The quality of data is essential in order to safely maximize energy density. This white paper from Churod Electronics details the hows and whys of FPC-based Cell Contacting Systems and how this cost-effective, yet reliable tool is a key to modern battery pack efficiency.
Public charging provider Zero 60 has added 26 new charging ports at three new locations in central and northern California. With the latest expansion, Zero 60 now operates 127 charging ports at 23 locations in California, Colorado, New York, Washington and Wisconsin.
Faith Technologies Incorporated (FTI) provided site development, construction, commissioning and ongoing operations support.
Zero 60 focuses on convenient, high-traffic sites such as quick-service restaurants, retail centers and travel corridors. Quick deployment is a priority. Fifty more charging points at sites around the country are in the pipeline.
“Adding this level of capacity in such a short time shows what’s possible when strategy, partnerships and execution align,” said eMobility Program Manager Joe Vancik. “Zero 60 is built to scale, and this growth is just the beginning.”
“This momentum reflects our ability to move fast and deliver what drivers and site partners need right now,” said Wade Leipold, Executive VP of Faith Technologies Incorporated. “By combining strong site partnerships with FTI’s end-to-end eMobility expertise, Zero 60 is scaling quickly while staying focused on reliability, convenience and the driver experience.”
Several EV manufacturers have branched out into the stationary battery biz, including Tesla and BYD. Now that the data center bubble is puffing up at an impressive (or alarming) rate, beaucoup businesses are bounding onto the battery bandwagon.
Automakers are better qualified than most to address this market. The latest to jump onboard is Ford, which has created a new wholly owned subsidiary, Ford Energy, to provide battery energy storage systems (BESS) for utilities, data centers and large industrial and commercial customers in the US.
Ford has been preparing for the launch for “the better part of a year,” securing supply chains and repurposing manufacturing sites. The company plans to invest some $2 billion to develop the new business (presumably in addition to the billions of bucks that it invested through the BlueOval SK venture).
Ford Energy’s flagship product, the Ford Energy DC block, is a standardized 20-foot containerized battery energy storage system designed around 512 Ah LFP prismatic cells. Ford will offer two configurations: the FE-250 (a two-hour system) and the FE-450 (a four-hour system). Both integrate LFP prismatic battery technology, liquid-cooled thermal management and a battery management system.
Ford will repurpose its abandoned battery manufacturing plant in Glendale, Kentucky. Ford Energy plans to deploy at least 20 GWh annually (which, as Electrek notes, is about half of Tesla’s planned Megapack production), and aims to make its first customer deliveries in late 2027.
Ford certainly has industrial and corporate assets to bring to the BESS table. “Utilities and developers need storage systems they can finance, insure and depend on for decades. They need suppliers who will be there in year 10 to honor a warranty claim,” the company correctly points out. “Ford has manufactured at industrial scale for more than a century.”
The data center boom is terrible news for the global climate and for local communities. If it proves to be a bubble, it will be a disaster for the US economy, but if it lasts, it could be good news for Ford and other legacy auto OEMs. As the ICE vehicle market dwindles, US brands may increasingly abandon global auto markets to China. For Ford and other automakers that have chosen not to compete in the EV market, building batteries for data centers could be a way for them to repurpose their massive factories, and someday to pivot to a new product mix if and when their automotive business fizzles.
The US public charging market did not emerge from private capital alone. From ARRA to IIJA, IRA and rural grant programs, federal policy repeatedly stepped in to create baseline charger demand, subsidize deployment, and teach the industry what real-world charging actually looked like.
The same is true in reverse: the policy turmoil of 2025 showed how quickly Washington can change the planning environment for network operators, site hosts and investors.
Government expands the fledgling market
Two federal programs provided essential funding for fledgling EV charging networks and greatly boosted the understanding of how EV chargers performed. The first federal action to fund EV charging came as part of the response to the global financial crisis caused by lax oversight of the mortgage industry. The recession of 2007-2009, described by the Federal Reserve as the Great Recession and its aftermath, triggered widespread foreclosures, a collapse of the financial industry, and a stock market crash that vaporized the life savings of millions of families. In an effort to reignite the economy, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which President Obama signed into law on February 17, 2009. Federal spending from the law ultimately reached $831 billion, of which $115 million (a scant 0.014%) went to the two EV charging infrastructure programs, the EV Project and ChargePoint America.
The ARRA-era programs did not just pay for early chargers. They gave the industry its first real-world data and lessons, which still underpin charging strategy today.
According to the Department of Energy’s 2013 final report on ChargePoint America, when electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids arrived in late 2010, there was “a substantial lack of infrastructure to support these vehicles.” The programs were designed to study charging infrastructure and use the lessons learned to support future deployment of plug-in electric vehicles and the charging infrastructure needed to support them.
These projects were literally and figuratively breaking ground as the awardees—Coulomb Technologies (later ChargePoint) and Ecotality—were figuring out how to work with local permitting authorities, utilities, engineering companies and electricians to design and implement chargers at residential and commercial locations. Mastering that process and getting chargers energized still bewilders novice (and some veteran) network operators and contractors. The studies also collected equipment and operating-cost data that charging networks and government agencies later used to estimate future costs and incentive levels.
Perhaps the most valuable insight from the programs was the first large-scale study of charger utilization: how many vehicles charge at a station, how long they remain connected, and how much energy is delivered to vehicle batteries. Combined, the two projects installed more than 17,000 chargers and collected data from millions of charging sessions. Ecotality went bankrupt before the EV Project ended, but its legacy endured after the network assets were purchased and morphed into today’s Blink network, while ChargePoint went on to operate more stations than anyone else in the US.
ARRA also made it easier for charging networks to accelerate their return on investment by expanding infrastructure tax credits beyond biofuels and hydrogen to include EV charging. For 2009-2010, the law increased the tax credit to 50% of total cost, up to $50,000 for commercial EV charging equipment, before returning to the previous 30% and $30,000 thresholds.
In 2016, the DOE went down another avenue to make more chargers available: loaning money to EV charging project developers. The Loan Programs Office clarified that EV charging builders were now eligible for low-interest loans from $4.5 billion in Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy funds. After the passage of the FAST Act in December 2015, the Obama White House designated 48 areas along highways across the US as national electric vehicle charging corridors. The act also directed DOE to study optimal national charging deployment scenarios, work that states and private developers later used to understand where future chargers should go.
Why this matters: The ARRA-era programs did not just pay for early chargers. They gave the industry its first real-world data on cost, utilization, siting, permitting and operations. These lessons still underpin charging strategy today.
IRA and IIJA try to save the day
Flash forward to 2021, and again an incoming Democratic administration grappled with a global financial crisis, and again it enacted legislation that included funding for EV charging infrastructure—only this time on a much larger scale than ARRA. The COVID-19 pandemic put global economies in a tailspin and, according to the Census Bureau’s summary of pandemic effects on employment, reduced the US workforce by 6.7 million between 2020 and 2021. During COVID, the previous decade of continuous growth in EV and charger sales unsurprisingly came to a screeching halt.
If ARRA helped prove the concept, IIJA and IRA attempted to industrialize it. They did not just underwrite more equipment, they created a far larger and more durable baseline of charger demand and available infrastructure.
Enacted in November 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act established two major programs to expand EV charging. The five-year National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program provides $5 billion to deploy public DC fast charging infrastructure, and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure discretionary grant program provides $2.5 billion for the strategic deployment of EV infrastructure as well as liquid and gaseous fueling.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 contained multiple provisions intended to stimulate EV and charging markets. The law reinstated the Alternative Fuel Refueling Property Tax Credit, better known as 30C, after it had expired in 2021; raised the maximum credit for charging equipment to $100,000; and extended the incentive through 2032. By expanding the credits, the IRA aimed to build on the more than 47,000 public and private places to charge and more than 2.24 million plug-in vehicles registered in the US in 2021, according to DOE.
Another federal funding source for growing the charger network is the USDA’s Community Facilities Direct Loan and Grant Program. The funding is available to community-based nonprofits and tribal organizations that can work with network operators to develop essential community facilities in rural areas—a category that now includes EV charging infrastructure.
Why this matters: If ARRA helped prove the concept, IIJA and IRA attempted to industrialize it. They did not just underwrite more equipment, they created a far larger and more durable baseline of charger demand and available infrastructure.
Putting EVs and charging in reverse
Jump ahead to 2025, and quickly after taking office, Trump administration officials took steps to dismantle federal support for EVs and charging infrastructure. In February, the administration rescinded prior guidance to states on how to implement NEVI, and suspended approval of all State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment plans, effectively putting the program on hiatus. On May 7, 2025, 17 state attorneys general sued the federal government for attempting to cancel congressionally approved NEVI funding, and on June 26 the US District Court for the Western District of Washington ordered that the funding be restored.
Charging has become a partially policy-built market. This means that policy whiplash can quickly become project whiplash.
In August, the Secretary of Transportation issued revised NEVI guidance that sought to remove some document requirements and reduce the need for public input. The revised guidance “simplifies things and gives more local control and flexibility” in where to install chargers, according to Ben Prochazka, Executive Director of the Electrification Coalition, a nonpartisan nonprofit that works to accelerate EV adoption.
In July 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill became law, adding a deadline for the 30C investment tax credit that requires projects, including EV chargers, to be in service by June 30, 2026. The administration also paused the CFI program in 2025, and no date has been given for future rounds of funding.
On November 21, 2025, a bipartisan group of 88 senators and House members wrote a letter urging continued funding for NEVI, CFI and related infrastructure programs. The lawmakers argued that surface transportation reauthorization is essential to giving states and localities the stability they need to plan long-term infrastructure projects. Providing that support would put money into the system and unlock private investment by reducing risk for infrastructure companies, according to Prochazka. “Finishing the job regarding NEVI and CFI shows that there is consistent support from the federal government. In the end, we are going to electrify transportation,” he said.
Dave Packard, the former president of ClipperCreek, believes the industry will continue to grow despite the vicissitudes of federal support. “Having been in this industry for 30 years, we’ve lived through swings in federal charging policy plenty of times,” he said.
Why this matters: Charging has become a partially policy-built market. That means policy whiplash can quickly become project whiplash, affecting siting decisions, private investment, and confidence that buildouts will continue on schedule.
Next in the series: Policy helped create the market for EV charging, but building chargers and running them profitably are two very different things. In Part 3, we look at why the economics of public charging remain so challenging.
EV software provider Driivz, a Vontier company, has been selected to power the Duracell E-Charge EV charging network across the UK.
The Driivz software platform provides “robust session data, accurate billing and transparent settlements” for charge point operators. The EV Network will use Driivz’s roaming capabilities, as well as real-time monitoring, remote diagnostics and proactive issue resolution.
Driivz’s EV charging software platform is designed to enable optimization of all EV charging operations, including charger monitoring and proactive and remote issue resolution. It includes a configurable billing engine; a white-label charging app and driver web portal; and a reporting and analytics platform.
“Duracell E-Charge is being built to set a new benchmark for ultra-fast charging in the UK. That means high uptime, simple pricing and a consistently reliable experience for drivers,” said Mark Bloxham, Managing Director of The EV Network. “Driivz gives us the platform to scale quickly while maintaining control, performance and commercial efficiency as the network grows.”
The Traton Group, majority-owned by Volkswagen, has raised a total of €850 million to invest in battery-electric drivetrains.
In 2025, Traton introduced a Green Finance Framework, enabling investors to specifically support projects related to battery-electric commercial vehicles. The company has now completed its first two transactions under this framework, issuing a €500-million green bond and securing a loan of €350 million.
Traton says it will use the “green funds” to accelerate the electric transformation of its brands MAN, Scania, International (USA), and Volkswagen Truck & Bus (Brazil). In the first quarter of 2026, the share of EV sales across all the group’s brands reached 1.4%—a paltry number, but an increase compared to the 0.9% reported in the same quarter of the previous year.
MAN has long offered a battery-electric city bus, the Lion’s City E, and recently launched a line of battery-electric trucks, centered around the eTGX. An electric coach, the Lion’s Coach E, is scheduled to debut this year. Scania recently secured an order for 91 electric public transport buses for in its hometown of Södertälje.
Traton’s CFO, Dr. Michael Jackstein, said: “Our first Green Bond and Loan on Traton level mark a clear milestone in the evolution of our financing strategy. It translates our electrification strategy to the bond and loan markets and provides investors with a transparent and credible opportunity to participate in the transformation of commercial transport. Both transactions clearly demonstrate that green finance and industrial transformation go hand in hand at Traton.”
Meanwhile, Traton, along with Daimler Truck and Volvo Truck, continues lobbying to weaken emissions standards in the US and Europe. The companies recently filed a motion through the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association to defend the Trump EPA’s repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding and the repeal of all motor vehicle climate standards.
This transformation is occurring globally, and axial flux technology is the answer.
Across on-highway, off-highway, marine, and industrial equipment sectors, the path to decarbonization is rarely linear. Real-world duty cycles, infrastructure limitations, cost pressures, and regulatory diversity mean that a single powertrain solution cannot meet every operational need. Hybrid systems have emerged not as an interim compromise but as a durable and scalable architecture for the future of mobility and work machines.
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