TECHNO, an acronym standing for "Temperature monitoring, Cooling and Heating during Normal Operation in a demonstration battery pack", is a project to develop an innovative battery pack for cars and any other type of electric vehicle. For a battery to deliver its best performance over a long life, the temperature of all the cells in it must be kept uniformly at the right operating temperature. TECHNO is the first system designed to be able to do this.

A conventional battery thermal management system (BTMS) struggles to maintain a uniform temperature because the battery itself generates an incredibly large amount of heat, especially during fast charging. Besides the obvious safety concern, the high temperature permanently damages the cells, and so reduces the battery life. In cold winter weather, parts of the battery --- or even part of an individual large cell --- may be too cold to operate efficiently, causing these cells to be damaged and putting strain on the other parts. The two challenges faced by a conventional BTMS are that it does not have sufficient information to identify hot and cold spots, and that it does not have the ability to cool or heat them independently of the rest of the battery. This is where TECHNO, with its capacity for active differential thermal management, comes in.