Quality is Key and 2025 Year End Review

Happy Holidays from the BBB team! Too early you might think? Well we are taking the rest of 2025 off so ‘tis the season.

Before we clock out, let’s revisit our predictions for 2025 that we boldly made in January so we can enjoy a little end of year victory lap.

So we predicted anodeless, battery recycling, and data science SaaS would be in in 2025, and PVDF and seed lithium would be out. The capacity fade one was a joke, a girl can dream.

Here’s how we did.

Out = PVDF

Ateois won battery manufacturer of the year at The Battery Show 2025. Not the PVDF replacement I personally would have bet on, but TBS did not call me for my expert consultation.

Nanoramic raised $54M for ​​Neocarbonix, which is absolutely a PVDF replacement.

Counting that prediction as a win.

Seed Li metal = Out, Anode-less = In

Ok we cheated here because this is basically the same prediction flipped, but this one also hasn’t come to fruition yet so let’s call this one a gentle whiff.

In = Battery Recycling

Redwood Materials raised $350M for battery recycling this year- which isn’t bad money for a domestic company rumored to be shipping their black mass to China. The prediction stands.

In= Battery SaaS

This one was basically free points. Still, it hit the battery sector, too, with Glimpse raising $10M for their CT-analysis software platform.

Across the board, we correctly predicted $414M in funding.
Next year I will manifest even louder.

Alright, onto the main event.

Last time we talked about how making one perfect cell in the lab is cute, but manufacturing wants to know if you can make that same cell thousands of times while the line is running, the machines are tired, and the line engineer is crying (I kid she would never).

So now that we’ve accepted mass production as the real battlefield, let’s zoom in on what happens right before a cell gets released into the world. By this point, every upstream defect that survived mixing, coating, calendering, stacking, welding, and filling is tucked neatly inside the cell, waiting to reveal itself.

And the only thing standing between those defects and a catastrophic failure is the final round of testing.

Enter the Final Five, the tests that decide whether a cell graduates or becomes an expensive paperweight.

DCIR
A current pulse test that’s great at flagging internal shorts or other failure modes. If the voltage drop looks wrong for the applied current, something inside the cell is misbehaving.

OCV
The cell’s “resting voltage.” Useful for tracking state of charge and spotting cells that drift away from the pack long before cycling starts.

Self-Discharge
Let the cell sit and watch how fast it loses voltage. Too much drop means leaks, bad separators, or parasitic reactions plotting chaos.

EIS
A frequency sweep that reveals the cell’s whole personality. Internal resistance, SEI health, diffusion, SOC, SOH. Think of it as the battery’s full diagnostic scan.

Capacity Grading
Charge, discharge, compare to reference curves. The final exam before a cell is allowed anywhere near a pack.

By the time a cell reaches testing, every upstream defect that slipped through is hiding somewhere inside it. That’s why the Final Five matter so much. They’re not just measurements. They’re the final interrogation before a cell earns the right to exist.

When these tests work, defective cells never leave the building. When they don’t, sometimes failures become catastrophic.

How does your team handle their data visualization? We want to hear from you. Respond to this email if you would be willing to have a 15min virtual coffee chat about how your team does it!