Where battery technology is heading: recap of the International Battery Seminar 2026
The Rosen Shingle Creek, the venue for IBS 2026. A new location for the seminar and a good choice for an event that continues to grow.
The 43rd International Battery Seminar concluded last week at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, and the EMS team is back with full notebooks and a better understanding of where the battery industry is heading.
For those unfamiliar with it, the International Battery Seminar is not a typical trade show. It is the longest-running annual event in the battery industry worldwide, organized by Cambridge EnerTech since 1983.
OEMs, cell manufacturers, materials scientists, national laboratories, pack integrators, and policymakers come together simultaneously and actively engage in discussions with one another.
This year, the seminar counted more than 2,000 attendees and over 248 speakers at a new venue, where presentations covered topics such as EV battery applications, next-generation research, high-performance manufacturing, grid storage, safety standards, and much more.
The EMS team at booth #312
The EMS team at booth #312. It was good to be back.
Engineered Materials Solutions was represented at booth #312 on the exhibition floor, alongside a mix of material suppliers, cell chemistry developers, testing and measurement companies, and manufacturing technology providers.
The conversations at our booth covered the usual spectrum of applications, from EV battery interconnect design to grid storage busbars, and our SigmaClad® product attracted the kind of questions that show people are seriously thinking about thermal and conductivity performance, not just looking for specifications.
One of the more interesting side conversations involved Amadas welding monitoring and tracking software, which a member of our team examined more closely on the exhibition floor.
There was no shortage of forward-looking technology on display either.
IKA Works had an interesting demonstration nearby, where attendees tested new technology using VR.
The question that ran through every session
Throughout the conference program, one theme kept emerging in various forms: How do you continue building on what works today while remaining open to what comes next?
Battery development does not follow straight lines.
There are proven chemistries and architectures around which OEMs have built entire production systems. And then there are a handful of technologies just appearing on the horizon, each promising to change the way batteries are designed, built, or used.
The tension between these two realities was palpable in almost every room.
Below are the technologies that came up most frequently in both the presentations and conversations at the show.
Dry battery electrode manufacturing
One of the panels that attracted the most attention had a title that precisely reflects what the industry is thinking: Dry Battery Electrode Manufacturing (DBE) Is Inevitable: Adopt or Fall Behind.
The conventional method for manufacturing battery electrodes involves mixing active materials into a liquid slurry with a toxic solvent called NMP (N-Methylpyrrolidone), applying this slurry to metal foil, and then running the coated foil through long, energy-intensive drying ovens to extract the solvent. The solvent must then be recovered, which means more equipment and more costs. The costs of the solvent drying and recovery process account for approximately 40% of the total manufacturing costs of lithium-ion batteries and cause significant energy consumption. ScienceDirect
Dry battery electrode processing eliminates this entire step. Instead of slurry, manufacturers work with dry powder mixtures that are applied directly to the current collector, with heat and pressure handling the bonding. This technology eliminates toxic solvents, reduces energy consumption by 25%, and could fundamentally transform the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. Highstar
The performance story is also becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. LiCAP Technologies claims that their dry electrode manufacturing process can reduce energy consumption by approximately 40% and overall battery manufacturing costs by up to 50%. Charged EVs
These figures require independent validation at scale, but the direction is consistent across multiple developers. And in February 2026, Tesla officially announced that both the cathodes and anodes of its 4680 batteries are now manufactured using the dry method, which “significantly reduces factory costs, energy consumption, and complexity.” Neware
The panel framing was not subtle. For manufacturers who have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in wet-process gigafactories, this is not a comfortable conversation. But the data points in one direction, and the companies building new production capacity are paying attention.
Solid-state batteries
Solid-state batteries have been discussed as the next major step in battery technology for nearly a decade. The argument for them has not changed: replace the flammable liquid electrolyte with a solid material, achieve a safer cell, enable a lithium metal anode, and unlock significantly higher energy density. The best lithium-ion batteries today deliver 200 to 300 Wh/kg. Solid-state batteries target commercial 400 to 500 Wh/kg, with the potential to reach 500 to 600 Wh/kg in the coming years. To7motor
The honest status report from IBS 2026 shows that the potential is there, but the timeline remains uncertain.
As of 2026, the solid-state battery market has not yet achieved scalability and commercialization. Wikipedia
Several major OEMs and cell manufacturers have announced timelines and then quietly revised them. Solid-state batteries promise safer, more powerful, and longer-lasting energy storage, but scaling them from laboratory innovation to mass production remains the industry’s greatest challenge. Internationalbatteryseminar
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence made this clear in one of the presentations on automotive batteries: battery technology development is moving in many different directions, with each of these paths being viewed as the next major breakthrough.
Developments include advances in LFP chemistry with LMFP, the use of silicon anodes, sodium-ion, and the emergence of ultra-fast charging technologies. However, solid-state batteries have already attracted interest for over a decade.
Ford’s cell technology team added a useful caveat: when so much attention and capital are directed at a technology, it is difficult to distinguish genuine progress from competitive positioning.
The materials science and manufacturing challenges associated with solid electrolytes—particularly interfacial resistance and dendrite suppression at industrial scale—are real technical problems that cannot be solved within the timeframes mentioned in press releases.
The expectation at the end of IBS is that semi-solid battery cells are currently in limited production, small series of solid-state EV cells are expected around 2027, and significant volume production could be achieved by 2030, provided interface and yield challenges continue to improve.
Tabless battery architecture
Cylindrical lithium-ion cells have long used metal tabs to connect the current collectors to the terminals. These tabs serve as the current path through which electricity flows from the electrode layers into the external circuit. Although this design has proven itself for decades, it brings certain limitations, particularly in high-performance applications. Battery Design
In a tabbed cell, current is forced through relatively narrow contact points. This leads to higher internal resistance, uneven current distribution, and higher I²R heating during high-current operation. Local heat hotspots can also develop, which can limit performance or complicate thermal management. Battery Design
The tabless architecture solves this problem by allowing the entire electrode edge to conduct current and distribute the load across the entire surface, rather than channeling it through a single tab. Distributed connections spread heat evenly across the electrode edges, resulting in cooler operation, reduced risk of thermal runaway, and improved cycle life. Trydan Tech
Tesla’s 4680 cell brought the tabless design into the industry-wide spotlight in 2020, and adoption has accelerated since then. Since Tesla introduced its tabless 4680 cell, cylindrical cells have been receiving increasing attention. German automaker BMW joined in and announced it would use cylindrical 46xxx cells in its “New Class,” which begins production in 2025. Wiley Online Library
For material suppliers focused on terminal and connection design, the tabless architecture changes some aspects of the technical discussion but does not make it obsolete. While the current collection path looks different, thermal performance, weld quality, and conductivity at scale remain central questions in design.
Other innovations worth tracking
Beyond these three main themes, several other technological focus areas kept emerging across the various presentations.
Silicon anodes. Graphite-based anodes have a theoretical upper limit on energy density. Silicon stores approximately ten times more lithium per gram, which means cells with significantly higher capacity are possible if silicon expansion during charging can be controlled. Several cell manufacturers are shipping silicon composite anodes in commercial products today, and research at Argonne National Laboratory and elsewhere is working on the remaining mechanical stability challenges.
Sodium-ion batteries. The price and supply chain concentration of lithium-ion, particularly from China, has moved sodium-ion further up the development agenda. Sodium-ion represents one of the alternative chemistries promising scalable, sustainable energy storage solutions for next-generation platforms. While energy density is lower than lithium-ion, the material costs and supply chain issues are particularly compelling for grid storage applications, where weight and size play a smaller role.
LFP and LMFP. Lithium iron phosphate chemistry has achieved major commercial success due to its safety profile, long cycle life, and cost advantages. The addition of manganese to form LMFP increases energy density while retaining most of the benefits of LFP. Several OEMs are building their entry-level EV platforms on this chemistry.
Wireless battery management systems. Several speakers described wBMS as a concrete, near-term change rather than just a concept. Eliminating the wiring harness inside a battery pack reduces weight, simplifies assembly, and eliminates a potential source of failure. Data and reliability requirements are high, but commercial deployment is already underway.
What this means from an EMS perspective
IBS 2026 confirmed what we already suspected: the battery supply chain is not converging on a single solution. It is increasingly diversifying. Tabless cells are changing the geometry of connections. Dry electrode processing is changing the interface between foil and current collector. Solid-state technology will ultimately even change what a tab or busbar connects to.
This means more work for materials engineers, not less. The companies staying ahead of these changes now are those already discussing material performance requirements before design is finalized, not after. That is what EMS is here for, and that is why being at IBS year after year matters.
If you were at IBS this year and would like to continue a conversation we started there, reach out to us. If you missed it: we will be back.
