CM Visit: CTEK
We brave the wilds of Sweden to visit the head office of the battery charging specialist.
When CM was invited to visit the research and development facilities of CTEK, we envisioned touring a gleaming glass and concrete facility in Stockholm or Gothenburg. It was quite a surprise then to be making our way through the forests and lakelands of rural Sweden, where it’s possible to drive for miles before encountering another vehicle on the road – and even that would be a tractor. We were en route to the town of Vikmanshyttan, population 810. Could this really be the home of the acknowledged world leader in battery charging technology?
If the exterior of the CTEK head office resembles a small town doctor’s surgery, once through the doors you are whisked into a 21st century laboratory with hi-tech security doors and banks of computers. A smartly-dressed boffin comes hustling through the foyer, looking for all the world like she’s just captured Higgs Boson in a test tube. Turns out she’s actually in search of cinnamon buns. Didn’t we know it was the annual Cinnamon Bun Day in Sweden? We didn’t. The Swedes take their pastries seriously.
Bun-eating frenzies aside, the R&D lab at CTEK is a place of quiet concentration. This is where the computer experts are working out the complex codes and logarithms of the next generation of battery chargers. Although much of this work is top secret by necessity, we are told that the current project is to devise a smart charger that can automatically recognise the type of battery it’s connected to. Although CTEK does produce a charger that can be manually switched between lead-acid and lithium-ion batteries, the goal is to develop a plug-and-play device which can differentiate the two types for itself, and get it to market before CTEK’S rivals. As a company that focuses exclusively on battery charging technology, its ethos is simple: it leads, others follow.
Building a charge
For such a focused company, it might seem odd that CTEK didn’t start out making battery chargers. In the mid1990s, the company’s founder, inventor Bengt Wahlqvist, was approached by a company to build a machine that would assemble each cell in a spiral battery much more tightly than previously possible, along with a side project to develop a device that could charge this sort of battery safely, as the chargers at the time were of the linear type with no voltage control. After Bengt had delivered the commissions, the company that hired him was subject to a takeover, leaving him holding the rights to the technology he had devised.
Bengt made the decision to use his prototype design to build a better battery charger and to do so in the bucolic surroundings of Vikmanshyttan. These weren’t quite the arbitrary decisions they might appear. Northern Sweden experiences heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures in the winter, so vehicles are often forced into hibernation for weeks at a time. This can play havoc with car batteries, so a device that can maintain a battery efficiently is a necessity rather than a luxury. And if you can build a device that can cope with a Swedish winter, it can cope with just about anything.
Ultimately, Bengt’s foresight was proven sound. In 1999, CTEK had just four employees and sold 1251 battery chargers. By 2014, there were 145 employees and 1,076,441 chargers were sold around the world.
Maintaining a charge
Across town, housed in an old iron foundry, is CTEK’S workshop, testing facility and warehouse. As CTEK sells chargers in more than 70 countries around the world, the devices have to operate in every extreme of temperature. Each model is put through its paces so that it can handle not only Arctic conditions, but also tropical heat and humidity, as well as being stresstested against rough handling and extreme atmospheric pressure. Before entering the lab, we’re cautioned that the test equipment can be harmful to anyone fitted with a pacemaker. None of us has one, but you can see everyone nervously wondering if perhaps this would be a good time to go in search of another cinnamon bun.
It’s quite common for motorists to describe a battery that fails to start a car as being ‘flat’, implying that it has been drained of power. This is seldom the case. A typical 12-volt battery that can only deliver, say, 11 volts is effectively ‘flat’, but it doesn’t mean that it is fully discharged, nor that it is incapable of being recharged. Part of CTEK’S objective is to stop drivers from replacing batteries unnecessarily. Hence why it prefers to use the term ‘battery maintainer’ rather than ‘battery charger’. Rather than using the device as a means of occasionally boosting the power of the battery, it tries to educate owners to leave the device plugged in. The CTEK units can remain connected indefinitely and will regularly check the status of the battery and take action if required. This takes the form of an eight-stage cycle (see right). You can even attach a Bluetooth device that communicates with a mobile and allows you to monitor what the maintainer is doing, sending you alerts if a problem is encountered.
Although CTEK produces a bewildering number of different premium battery maintainers – including 12V and 24V devices for everything from motorcycles and family cars to trucks and other commercial vehicles, professional equipment for garages and workshops, and a range of branded devices for use specifically with highspec vehicles made by Porsche, Ferrari and Mercedes-benz – even a basic model won’t break the bank and can quickly earn back your initial investment.
‘CTEK’S ethos is simple: it leads, others follow’