By Ariel Grossman, NoCamels -
An Israeli automotive startup was busy completing its first major contract with car giant Volvo when its team was caught up in the October 7 attack by the Hamas terror group, which killed 1,200 people in southern Israel.
Carrar has developed a new way of automatically cooling electric vehicle (EV) batteries, by more effectively dissipating the heat generated when being used or charged, or just idling in a hot parking lot. This prevents damage to the batteries that in some extreme circumstances could even cause the car to catch fire.
The Carrar facility is based near the city of Sderot, where gangs of terrorists who stormed across the border from Gaza rampaged through the streets for hours until they were brought down by Israeli security forces.
Most of the company’s 24-person team also lives in or near Sderot, not far from the Carrar base at Sapirim Industrial Park. And like most people, they found their lives – and work – put on hold as Israel reeled from the shock of the attack.
Hamas terrorists did in fact target the company’s facilities with rocket-propelled grenades, but the factory fortunately escaped without severe damage.
“We were all in shock during that first week,” CEO Avinoam Rubinstain tells NoCamels.
Nearly every person in the company has an experience to share from that terrible day, he says.
Tom Balestra, the company’s R&D integration engineer, hid under the bed with his pregnant wife for 13 hours at their home in Kibbutz Nir Am. It was one of the few communities that Hamas terrorists failed to enter, thanks to the civil guard who repelled their attacks.
And a project manager from the startup was abroad on his honeymoon on the day of the attack, only to later discover that two family members had been killed. He attended 11 funerals in the first week he came back.
“On October 7, we didn’t know until late at night whether everyone was still alive,” Rubinstain recalls.
But by the second week of the war, the Carrar team had decided to return to work. On their first day back, they were accompanied by members of the Israeli security forces to ensure that no Hamas terrorists had escaped and were hiding out in their offices.
According to Rubinstain, the chances of successfully making the November deadline for their first major business deal were low.
“There was not a high probability that we would make the target, but the team worked really hard,” he says. Not only did they give up their weekends to reach their goal but also repeatedly flew back and forth to Germany, where they were now testing the battery packs.
And despite all the worry, fear and grief that the team was going through, they made the deadline.
The company’s patented battery packs house an EV’s lithium ion fuel cells. The packs are filled with liquid that vaporizes whenever the fuel cells heat up, which happens whenever the car is being driven or charged.
The vapor is funneled to a condenser, which cools it down and into liquid form again before sending it back to chill the battery cells.
The solution is universal, and has already been tested on battery cells from multiple manufacturers.
“We got attention from almost every car manufacturer,” he says, “because the challenges that Carrar addresses is one of the biggest challenges in the market – to make the EVs available to everyone.”
There are several methods used today to cool EV batteries, the most common being liquid cooling. This involves placing a liquid coolant such as water or ethylene glycol around the battery cells, which redirects the heat.
One downside to liquid cooling is that the connections between the pipes can degrade over time and lead to the coolant leaking, hurting battery performance and lifespan and posing potential safety hazards.
But the greatest drawback, says Rubinstain, is that this system – and the other methods used to cool EV batteries – simply cannot dissipate enough heat.
This means that EV makers deliberately slow the process to fully charge batteries. Most public charging stations will deliver enough juice per hour for 15-25 miles (24-40 km) of driving – meaning it takes 10 hours or more to completely charge a battery.
But Rubinstain says that EVs fitted with Carrar’s battery packs only need around 20 minutes to fully charge.
“We address all of the challenges in electrical vehicles in one solution,” he says.
And despite the trauma they have faced, the Carrar team keeps working, looking ahead to the next big project.
“It’s a very difficult situation – but we are trying to do our best,” Rubinstain says.
“We see our company as an island of stability for our workers.”
