Hioki announces the launch of the DC Hipot Tester ST5680A, designed for hipot DC and insulation resistance testing of EV battery cells, modules, and packs on production lines. The ST5680A combines compliance with major international certifications, including CE, UKCA, and CSA (NRTL), with an integrated contact check function and waveform recording and analysis of test voltage, leakage current, and insulation resistance.
These capabilities enable manufacturers to build a common, global test platform for hipot and insulation evaluation across EV battery cells, modules, and packs at production sites worldwide. In addition to mass production testing, the ST5680A also supports hipot-related design verification and material evaluation in R&D, helping to improve EV battery reliability and contribute to a safer, more secure electrified society.
With the global adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and the advancement of autonomous driving technologies, automotive electrical and electronic components are required to meet increasingly higher standards of reliability. EV batteries, in particular, store large amounts of energy as the vehicle’s power source. Even minute defects or contamination that compromise internal insulation can lead to serious safety risks, including electric shock or fire. As a result, hipot and insulation testing that reliably ensures battery safety and quality has become a critical process on EV battery production lines.
To comply with different certifications at each site (CE, UKCA, CSA, etc.), different DC hipot testers are used at each factory, making it difficult to standardize models and complicating maintenance and certification management. For module and pack testing, external continuity checkers or additional test steps are often required to verify contact quality to the test object, resulting in more complex equipment design and longer setup time and takt time. When engineers need to observe voltage and current behavior during hipot tests as waveforms, they must build a separate measurement setup with an oscilloscope, high-voltage probes, and current probes, which introduces a gap from actual line conditions and separates test logs from waveform data, reducing analysis efficiency. To address these issues, Hioki has developed the ST5680A, which integrates global safety standard compliance, contact check, and waveform analysis functions into a single DC hipot tester.
The ST5680A is a DC hipot tester designed for EV battery cell, module, and pack production lines, as well as R&D applications such as hipot-related design verification and material evaluation. It is compliant with CE, UKCA, and CSA (NRTL) certifications, offering a maximum output of 8 kV / 20 mA for DC hipot tests while including an integrated, capacitance-based contact check function. The ST5680A also provides time-series waveform display and recording of voltage, current, and insulation resistance while offering support for safe, stable, and efficient high-voltage testing through various auxiliary functions.
During DC hipot and insulation resistance testing, the ST5680A can record and display waveforms of voltage, current, and insulation resistance without external equipment. It supports up to 128 s / 500 kS/s recording and allows integrated management of test logs and waveform data. By capturing waveforms under actual production conditions, manufacturers can accelerate failure analysis, quantitatively evaluate process changes, and enhance traceability. The ST5680A is equipped with safety-critical functions such as voltage limiting, automatic discharge, and interlock. In addition, productivity/support functions—including auto-ranging, panel memory, and ARC detection—help ensure safety and repeatability while enabling efficient day-to-day production testing operations.
Key applications include DC hipot and insulation resistance testing of finished EV battery modules, packs and testing on EV battery cell production lines, insulation evaluation and BDV (breakdown voltage) testing of EV battery materials and structures and insulation performance testing of high-voltage automotive components such as motors and inverters and other general high voltage DC hipot and insulation resistance tests.
Click here to learn more about Test and Measurement on everything PE.
