Connecting the Next Generation of EV Batteries

Falling battery prices, improving battery chemistries, smarter pack architectures, faster charging speeds, and better battery connectors are bringing continuing advancements e-mobility.

In many parts of the world, advanced components and engineering are solving the range anxieties that have held back e-mobility. Large-scale adoption in many European and Asian countries, and affordable new EV brands from China, are demonstrating that the e-mobility transition is underway. Electrification of the small engine market, motorsports equipment, and warehouse vehicles have been widely successful. However, from a design perspective, this market remains largely fragmented. While the NACS charging connector is now a standard charging interfaces, many of the other components and architectures used in EVs are still in a state of active exploration and change, with EVs, hybrids, and internal combustion engines all competing. Automotive OEMs still haven’t settled on a single battery technology, making it necessary for component suppliers to offer new solutions for many different versions of this market. That may be about to change, however. Honda recently announced that it is now manufacturing a proprietary solid state battery.

Many automakers, notably Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and Renault, have been working towards solid state batteries as a goal achievement. Vehicles with SSBs can charge ultra fast with ranges up to 700-900 miles per change, well beyond that of a tank of gas. Price has been a roadblock, but new manufacturing processes are bringing that down and Honda says it can now produce these batteries for a consumer market. SSBs could transform the EV market, and drive new developments for energy storage and device design as well. Honda says it will implement its batteries in the next two years, although its 2027 lineup still uses lithium-ion, along with most of global EV industry.

In the U.S., most subsidies for consumers in the EV market have ended, but an unstable energy market, growing climate change impacts, along with the example of the small engine equipment market, have helped to sustain interest in e-mobility. “Outside of marine and long-haul trucking, virtually all of our customers are at least conducting studies on electrification,” said Henrique Ferrari, Applications Engineer at Chief Entreprises. “Unlike earlier expectations that internal combustion engines would be completely replaced overnight, the transition is more nuanced, but EV development continues to progress steadily across multiple markets.

“My personal take is that while EV development has slowed overall, attributing that purely to reduced government support doesn’t tell the whole story. Consumer adoption is also impacted by practical challenges like charging speeds, infrastructure gaps, and battery longevity compared to ICE vehicles. Guiding customers through this landscape comes down to aligning with their specific product strategies rather than offering a one-size-fits-all roadmap.”

Chief’s engineering team works with customers across the various vehicle markets. The company watches new developments closely to help customers access components that will enable then to move past the experimentation stage. Chief offers off-the-shelf components for battery systems, such as contactors and connectors, and has the engineering capability to integrate these products, said Ferrari.

Chief Enterprises is a Bosch distributor. EV solutions include high-voltage interconnects that help facilitate fast charging.

“Integration and standardization are the primary hurdles. While off-the-shelf EV components are widely available, integrating them into units like a Power Distribution Module (PDM) or Battery Disconnect Module remains complex. Customers are constantly weighing ROI questions: Will this unit carry over to next-generation platforms? Is volume high enough to justify a custom solution? On the technical side, the biggest engineering challenge is managing heat dissipation and temperature rise, which directly drives decisions around material selection (copper vs. aluminum) and the influence of raw material costs. So it’s partly technical and partly economical,” he said. “However, battery system architecture and pack development remain deeply integrated with individual OEM requirements at the moment.”

Battery technology and system impacts

At the Battery Show North America, running October 12-15 at Huntington Place in Detroit, the diversity of battery technologies and their corresponding architectures will be on display. Connector suppliers including Ametek, Amphenol, Bel Connectivity Solutions, Heilind, Hirose, ITT Cannon, Lumberg, Rosenberger, Samtec, and TTI will exhibit new connectivity products and TE Connectivity will present at the conference.

New battery architectures. TE Connectivity

TE’s sessions will explore how the fragmented battery market is impacting design architectures, components, and the global supply chain. Global OEMs are dealing with different regulations, technologies, and levels of investment around the world. These differences impact vehicle design, including higher system voltages and charging currents, increased thermal demands, and more integrated power architectures. TE is also presenting on Software Defined Vehicles. Across vehicle types, SDVs are driving fundamental changes in vehicle networks, zonal architectures, and the design of wiring harnesses, connectors, and electronic systems. The shift to 800-volt (and future higher) platforms is another topic of conversation, with attendant changes to faster charging and lighter-weight cabling, which raise performance requirements for connectors in the system.

Rosenberger’s HVR 210 is a compact, cost-effective connector solution that helps enable 800-V systems with future-proofing for 1,200-V architectures. Copper and aluminum conductors available for all cross-sections.

Rosenberger will exhibit its solutions for higher voltage systems. The company has released connectors for 800-V vehicle architectures that are designed to facilitate the next transition to higher voltage levels of 1,000 V and 1,200 V. These higher voltages will make it possible to transmit the same amount of power at lower currents. The lower currents require new cables that allow for smaller cable cross-sections, with a continuing move towards greater compactness and weight reduction.

Connectors and the push for faster charging

Connectors help facilitate faster EV charging. In China, automakers like Geely and BYD have unveiled new fast-charging systems that can charge a car in under five minutes, rivaling a gas station visit, and less than half the time it takes to charge at a Tesla Supercharger. These companies have combined hardware strategies such as liquid cooled cables with blade-type batteries and AI temperature management in the vehicle, and on the station side, battery storage systems and solar power.

As DC fast-charging systems push past 350 kW, the connectors and cables carrying that current have had to manage more heat. Liquid-cooled cable and connector assemblies are now standard on the highest-power charging equipment, since passive designs can’t dissipate the heat load adequately. Contact material and plating choices, such as silver versus tin, can make a big difference in current density, but cost considerations against conductivity and wear life. And because a charging connector gets mated and unmated thousands of times over its life, often outdoors and in all weather, durability and sealing are as much a design problem as raw current-carrying capacity.

Higher-voltage architectures mean busbars and high-voltage interconnects have to manage greater electrical stress in a smaller footprint, with less room for error on creepage and clearance. Blind-mate and modular connector designs are easing pack assembly on the manufacturing line and making service and second-life repurposing more practical — an increasingly important consideration as the first wave of EV batteries starts reaching end-of-life. And as battery management systems get more sophisticated, tracking voltage and temperature at the individual cell level, the signal and data connectors carrying that information have become as critical to pack safety as the high-current power connections themselves.

To learn more about the companies mentioned in this article, visit the Preferred Supplier pages for Chief Enterprises and Rosenberger.

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