San Diego-based power solutions provider South 8 brought its novel cold-weather battery capabilities to the Association of the US Army 2026 exposition, held in Washington, DC, from 12 to 14 October, exhibiting alongside helmet, power and data management solutions provider Galvion, with whom South 8 entered a partnership in November 2025.
As Layne Bashor, South 8’s senior business development manager, explained to Warsight at AUSA 2026 on 12 October, “Our core innovation is the electrolyte. We make a liquefied gas electrolyte that we call LiGas [liquefied gas]. In a normal battery, you have a liquid electrolyte, so we swap that out; we use the liquefied gas. It lowers the freezing temperature, and that’s why you get this huge operational temperature range.”
Using this technology South 8’s 18650-standard battery, the Arctic AE35, uses LiGas to enable reliable charge and discharge from −60°C to +60°C.
Bashor noted that South 8’s Arctic AE35 batteries “are able to charge down to −40°C in about 14 hours, which is very reasonable. For the nearest competitor cell, −20°C takes three days. We take five hours, right? Big difference. No heating required. No thermal management systems.”
South 8 and Galvion’s SoloPack Arctic
Bashor explained that Galvion is an investor company in South 8 and uses its technology in the Galvion SoloPack Arctic rugged, extreme-cold-weather rechargeable battery for individual soldier systems, each of which contains eight Arctic AE35 cells. Galvion’s SoloPack Arctic battery made its debut at AUSA 2026.
Initial quantities of SoloPack Arctic batteries will be deployed in a number of upcoming US Army field evaluations, including US Army DEVCOM and International Cooperative Engagement Program for Polar Research (ICE-PPR)’s upcoming Operation Mjölnir, providing opportunities to evaluate performance in operationally relevant extreme-cold conditions.
Jonathan Blanshay, founder and executive chairman of Galvion, was quoted as staying in a 6 October 2026 company press release as stating, “Arctic readiness is becoming an increasingly important requirement for the US and allied forces, and reliable power is fundamental to operating effectively in those environments. Extreme cold exposes the limitations of equipment that performs well under normal conditions, so we need to ensure that the technologies soldiers depend on are ready to perform wherever the mission takes them. SoloPack Arctic reflects our approach to capability development: identify a real operational challenge, bring together the right technologies and partners, and deliver a practical solution for the warfighter.”
