Ateq launches electric vehicle battery balancer

With electric vehicles soon to be a large part of the overall vehicle parc Ateq – a company best known in the tyre business for its TPMS products – has launched an industrial scale battery management tool. Designed for both electric vehicles (EV) and hybrid-electric vehicles (HEV), the battery module balancer is called the EVB 5100. The unit is designed for rework stations in battery manufacturing or electric vehicle production plants. According to the company, it uses “the most efficient and precise technologies to equalize voltage differences between modules to maximize battery performance”.

The rationale behind the introduction EV vehicle assembly plants cannot just assume the batteries they put in their electric vehicles are perfect. If batteries are underperforming, it is likely due to electric cell imbalance. Slight differences in the module capacity, temperature, state of charge, self-discharge rate and impedance can lead to a deviation in voltage. When an EV battery is diagnosed as being defective, the faulty module needs to be replaced. The EVB5100 Module Balancer charges or discharges the new replacement module to the same state of charge as the other modules.

According to Ateq, performing battery balancing on-site with the EVB5100 saves time and money since the transportation of batteries and modules is complex and expensive. Furthermore, the EVB5100 delivers a detailed report that can be transferred to the factory network, or accessed remotely via a cloud-based interface. Ateq also offers leak testers used at every step of EV battery production, from leak testing the insulation of each individual battery cell pouch, to testing the battery module. With the addition of the EVB 5100 to the current leak, flow and battery testing product line-up, ATEQ now provides solutions for the production process, for final QC assembly, testing and maintenance.