Hyundai to enhance safety of reused EV batteries  

Young-jo Ji, president of Hyundai Motor Group’s innovation division, and Sajib Jesudas, president of UL Commercial, signed the agreement for SLBESS product certification and demonstration.

Hyundai Motor Group is working with UL, a global safety certification company, to strengthen the safety of the Second Life Battery Energy Storage System (SLBESS) for electric vehicles.

On July 25, Hyundai Motor Group signed an MOU with UL for the certification and demonstration of SLBESS products. The two companies plan to promote multi-faceted cooperation for SLBESS that reuses electric vehicle batteries by introducing a differentiated ‘UL signature solution’ to enhance reliability, jointly developing exclusive UL evaluation standards, and conducting a North American demonstration project.

Hyundai will introduce the ‘UL Signature Solution’ that strictly verifies the safety of specific products from the early stage of SLBESS development. Through this, it is expected that the fundamental safety of SLBESS will be strengthened and the time required for safety certification will be shortened.
In addition, it plans to secure the world’s highest level of safety by jointly developing UL evaluation standards that reflect Hyundai Motor Group’s SLBESS technology and detailed structural characteristics of EV batteries such as modules and pack units.
UL, with a 120-year history, has testing laboratories all over the world related to safety as well as the performance and environment of various products.
“We expect to maximise the safety of SLBESS through strategic collaboration with global safety certification companies,” said Young-jo Ji, president of Hyundai Motor Group innovation.
Sajib Jesudas, president of UL Commercial, said, “This cooperation with Hyundai Motor Group will contribute to the development of competitive SLBESS and safety certification in the global market by sharing excellent R&D capabilities between the two companies.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has predicted that 145 million EVs would be sold worldwide by 2030,  SNE Research, an energy market research company, says that the global market for reusable batteries will increase in 2030, growing to about 20.2 trillion won.