It was supposed to be an ordinary afternoon. A woman in Kerala pulled into a public charging bay, topped up her EV, and reached to unplug the connector. What happened next made the evening news: a loud flash, a jolt, and burns that sent her to the hospital.
In Delhi, a 7-year-old boy brushed past an e-rickshaw plugged into a makeshift charger and never made it home. Elsewhere, drivers have sat inside their vehicles while charging, only to be electrocuted because of exposed wiring.
These are difficult stories to read—but for those of us working in the EV ecosystem, they’re reminders that charging safety isn’t just technical—it’s deeply human.
The Hidden Risks We Work With
If you’re building or rolling out EV charging projects, you know the pressures:
- Move fast, scale fast.
- Balance cost with compliance.
- Keep up with evolving standards.
But what the headlines tell us is that it’s not enough to “check the box.” Cables age, seals fail, dust and rain find their way into connectors, and small oversights in procurement or testing can cascade into something catastrophic.
The challenge for the industry extends beyond design. It is in making sure that systems stay safe when deployed at a dusty roadside station, a crowded fleet yard, or even a rainy apartment basement.
Where Hipot Testing Fits Naturally
This is why hipot testing has become such a quiet backbone of EV infrastructure. For the uninitiated, a hipot test is essentially a stress test: apply higher-than-operating voltage to insulation, and check if any current sneaks through.
Done right, it answers questions like:
- Will this connector still hold up in three years of heat cycles?
- Is this inverter’s insulation margin enough to prevent arcing in humid conditions?
- Will this batch of cables survive real-world abuse without leakage?
It’s not glamorous work, but for project managers, engineers, and procurement teams, it’s a way of saying: we caught the weak links before the field did.
Tools We Lean On
In labs and production floors we visit, one name comes up often: Vitrek. Their hipot testers are known for being precise, repeatable, and fast—qualities that matter when you’re running hundreds of units through validation.
- Engineers like the accuracy—it picks up micro-leakages early.
- Project teams appreciate the automation and data logging—it saves time and provides traceable proof for compliance.
- Procurement folks value that it scales well—whether for lab R&D or production QA.
It’s not about chasing brands; it’s about knowing which tools practitioners trust to avoid the kind of incidents we started with.
Beyond the Lab: Keeping Systems Safe in the Field
Of course, testing before deployment is just one half of the story. Once charging stations are live, we need eyes and ears in the system. That’s where current and voltage sensors come in.
We’ve seen LEM sensors used widely across EV projects for:
- Monitoring battery charge/discharge cycles accurately.
- Detecting faults in chargers before they escalate.
- Balancing loads across networks to prevent outages.
At Globetek, our role has often been to bridge these two worlds—helping EV companies validate safety with Vitrek testers, and then keep systems reliable with LEM’s sensors once deployed.
A Shared Responsibility
When you strip away the acronyms and tools, this work comes down to one thing: keeping people safe while building the future of mobility.
Every engineer running a test, every procurement decision on connectors or testers, every project manager deciding timelines—each of these shapes whether the next EV charging headline is about a breakthrough or a mishap.
And while testing and sensing might feel like the invisible parts of the system, they are exactly what let the visible parts—the cars, the stations, the networks—operate with trust.
Final Thoughts
We’ve all seen how quickly trust can be lost after a single incident. Building EV infrastructure that’s safe, scalable, and lasting isn’t just about technology—it’s about foresight.
That’s why we believe rigorous hipot testing and reliable sensing aren’t add-ons; they’re safeguards for the people who use what we build. And at Globetek, standing alongside EV teams, that’s the role we’re proud to play.
If you’re looking for reliable hipot testers, that work just right everytime – contact us. We’ll help you all the way from sourcing to solutioning.
