UL Goes EV

(Image: UL)

UL, the organization that is well known for its testing and certification of a variety of products, including those of an electric nature, has decided to establish an electric vehicle (EV) battery laboratory.

How Come? Explains Mary Joyce, UL’s vice president and general manager, Automotive Div., “The development of our EV battery laboratory demonstrates our long-term commitment to empower the safe development of clean, zero-emission transportation. For more than 125 years, we continue to apply science and objective authority to solve critical challenges by helping to develop and market safer products and innovations. Our new EV battery laboratory allows us to harness this approach and equips us to better partner with companies to fast-track their project fulfillment—allowing them ultimately to quickly grow and thrive.”

Obviously the organization recognizes that the EV industry is burgeoning and given what it has been doing for a long, long time, it has the type of knowledge and resources that can be applied to EVs.

What Will It Do? Among the things that the lab will address are battery safety, charging systems and grid integration. Also, it will provide EV and power battery manufacturers with reliability verification, functional safety of battery management system, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging, power grid integration, repurposing batteries, energy storage system and functional safety services.

Where? UL’s global headquarters is based in Northbrook, Illinois. It has operations around the world.

So NoCal Maybe? The most-famous—as well as biggest-selling—manufacturer of EVs is Tesla. So given that it is located in Silicon Valley and given that there is an increasing amount of research and development in that part of the world into advancing transportation technology, it might seem that UL would establish its EV lab in that area.

But that’s not the case.

The facility, which is to be fully operational April 2020, is being established in Changzhou, China.