5 things worth seeing at Battery Tech Expo 2026 (besides our stand)
Battery Tech Expo lands at The Wing, Silverstone on Thursday 23 April 2026, and if you have ever tried to do a one-day show properly you'll know the hardest part is not the walking, it's the choosing. Over 100 exhibitors, a full day of talks, and a visitor list that cuts across cell makers, pack integrators, OEMs, test labs, regulatory bodies, and recyclers.
We'll be on Stand A35 running live electrochemical impedance spectroscopy on visitor cells, which we've written about separately. This post is about everything else worth your time.
1. The headline sessions on the main stage
The conference programme usually runs two parallel streams through the day, with the morning slots typically covering cell chemistry and manufacturing, and the afternoon leaning into pack integration, second life, and regulation. Check the latest agenda on the official site before you go — speaker line-ups tend to firm up in the fortnight before the show.
Worth flagging in particular: anything covering the UK Battery Strategy and its impact on test and certification requirements, and any talks from cell manufacturers on new chemistries — sodium-ion and silicon-dominant anodes are where the most interesting product news tends to surface.
2. The cell manufacturers you don't usually get access to
One of the quieter reasons to attend a show like this is that the engineering contacts behind major cell makers are in the room, in a mood to talk, and not behind a corporate gatekeeper. If you are evaluating a new cell supplier — or trying to understand why a batch behaved oddly — a ten-minute conversation at a stand will get you further than a month of emails.
Look for the tier-two and tier-three suppliers as well as the big names. Some of the most useful conversations we've had at previous shows have been with smaller European and Asian cell makers who are actively looking for UK distribution partners.
3. Test and measurement — it's not just us
We are genuinely happy when visitors find complementary test kit at the show. A good battery test regime needs cycling, environmental conditioning, safety compliance, and impedance diagnostics, and no single vendor does all four well.
Worth looking for:
- Environmental and thermal chamber vendors, especially anyone doing fast-ramp rated to abuse-testing temperatures
- Hipot and electrical safety test providers — important as UKCA/UKNI marking continues to bite on pack-level products
- Data acquisition and BMS validation specialists
If you want to talk about how these plug into an EIS workflow with the EA-BIM 20005, come and find us at A35 afterwards — we'll happily sketch it on a napkin.
4. The recycling and second-life corner
Second-life and end-of-life battery applications have gone from a fringe topic three years ago to one of the fastest-moving areas at every UK battery show. The commercial reality is that packs coming out of early EVs are now hitting end of first life in real volume, and the UK regulatory picture — extended producer responsibility, battery passport requirements — is catching up fast.
If your work is nowhere near recycling today, it is worth an hour anyway. The state-of-health measurement standards being developed for second-life qualification will eventually flow back into how new cells are tested, and the impedance-based methods are moving from research to practice quickly.
5. The quiet spots and the good coffee
The Wing at Silverstone is a decent venue but the main hall gets loud by mid-morning. The upstairs balcony tends to stay quieter if you need five minutes to answer emails or have a less shouty conversation with a prospect. The coffee on the ground floor is reliable. If you want lunch that isn't a sandwich from a bag, the café overlooking the circuit is worth the short walk.
Parking is free for attendees and the approach from the A43 is straightforward. If you are coming by train, Northampton is the nearest usable station and it's about twenty minutes by taxi.
And when you're done, come say hello
Stand A35, any time on the day. Bring your 21700 cell if you want to see a live impedance spectrum on your own kit. You can book a 15-minute slot in advance at https://www.tek.com/en/lp/event/em-ea-auto-battery-tech-expo-with-partner-caltest-lp, or just drop in — we'll find a gap.
Whatever else you do on Thursday, we hope you leave with one new thing in your notebook that changes how you test next week. That's always the bar.
