ISO 19642 High Voltage Cable, XLFE 200°C, 1500 V DC

An electric vehicle’s high-voltage harness is the only place on a car where 1,500 V DC and 150 mm² of copper have to live inside a bend radius measured in centimetres, next to a pack that runs hot, for fifteen years. ISO 19642 is the standard written for exactly that, and this is our cable built to it.

The insulation is an irradiation cross-linked fluoroelastomer (XLFE). Cross-linking by electron beam rather than by chemistry gives a thin wall that will not melt, will not flow under pressure at 150 °C, and shrugs off the coolant, oil and battery-adjacent chemistry that gets at silicone and EPDM. That is what buys the 200 °C temperature class F rating — 3,000 hours of ageing at 200 °C with no cracking and no breakdown — in a wall thin enough that the finished cable still fits the routing you have already designed.

Two builds cover the whole harness. ISO 19642-5 is the unscreened single core: pack-to-inverter, inverter-to-motor, busbar tails, anywhere the EMC is handled elsewhere. ISO 19642-9 is the round, sheathed and screened version, with a minimum 85 % braid coverage, for the runs where the harness itself has to be quiet.

Sizes run 3.0 mm² to 150 mm², with larger constructions to 250 mm² on request, rated 1,000 V AC / 1,500 V DC. Both ISO flexible and ISO standard stranding are available, and that choice is worth more than it looks — see the Specifications tab.

This sits apart from everything else in our cable de alta temperatura range: it is an automotive standard, not a UL AWM style, and it is specified by ISO part number rather than by material. Send the part number, the cross-section, screened or unscreened, and the tightest bend on the route.

Two builds share one insulation system. What changes between them is everything outside the insulation, and what that costs you is diameter, weight and bend radius.

ISO 19642-5 — unscreened single core

1. Director: bare copper, fine-stranded, in ISO flexible or ISO standard stranding.
2. Aislamiento: irradiation cross-linked fluoroelastomer (XLFE), thin wall. That is the whole cable.

ISO 19642-9 — round, sheathed and screened

1. Director: as above.
2. Primary insulation: the same XLFE wall.
3. Pantalla: a tinned copper braid at a minimum 85 % coverage.
4. Vaina: a second XLFE layer over the braid, so the outside of the cable has the same chemical and temperature behaviour as the inside.

Why irradiation cross-linking, and not a chemically cross-linked compound

A thermoplastic melts and a chemically cross-linked rubber is cured in a bath or a tube, which limits how thin and how consistent the wall can be. Electron-beam cross-linking happens after extrusion, on the finished wall, so the wall can be extruded thin and precise first and made thermoset afterwards. The result is the combination this application actually needs: a wall that does not flow under a clamp at 150 °C, does not crack at −40 °C, resists cut-through where the harness crosses a bracket, and is still thin enough that a 150 mm² core finishes at about 21 mm rather than 30.

Against the two materials it usually replaces: it is tougher than silicone, which is flexible but tears and cuts through easily and needs a braid to survive a harness route; and it holds temperature far better than EPDM, which is a 150 °C material at best. It is also UV resistant, which matters on the underfloor runs and on charging infrastructure.

The screen is a sandwich, not an afterthought

Putting a braid on costs roughly 3 mm of diameter and a third more weight at 35 mm², and it pushes the minimum bend radius up by about a quarter. That is a real packaging cost, so screen the runs that need screening rather than the whole harness by default. Where the pack, the inverter and the motor housings already form a continuous shielded enclosure, part 5 unscreened cable inside that enclosure is the lighter, cheaper and easier-to-route answer.

Stranding: flexible or standard

ISO defines both. They are electrically identical for a given cross-section — same conductor resistance, near-identical finished diameter — but the flexible stranding uses many more, much finer wires, and it turns a far tighter corner. The numbers are in the Specifications tab and they are the most under-used lever on this product.

This is a road-vehicle standard, and the cable was designed around the one problem an EV high-voltage harness has that no other harness has: very large copper, very high DC voltage, a hot pack, and a routing envelope set by the body-in-white long before anyone chose a cable.

Dónde se utiliza

• Battery pack to inverter — the biggest cross-sections on the vehicle, and usually the tightest bends.
• Inverter to traction motor — three phases, high ripple current, and an EMC problem that decides screened or unscreened.
• Inside the battery pack — module interconnects, contactor and fuse tails, service disconnect wiring, where 200 °C class is about the fault case, not the duty cycle.
• DC charge inlet to pack — the run that has to carry the full charge current with the vehicle stationary and no airflow.
• Stationary energy storage — rack and container busbar tails, PCS connections, and BESS enclosures that borrow the automotive standard because it is stricter than the industrial one.
• Commercial and off-highway electrification — buses, trucks, mining and agricultural machines, where the vibration and the temperature are both worse than in a car.
• Test benches and HIL rigs — where cables are re-routed constantly and flexible stranding earns its money.

Screened or unscreened: the decision

The honest rule is that the screen belongs where the shielding enclosure is broken. An inverter output leaving a shielded housing and running to a shielded motor housing through open air needs a screened cable and a 360° termination at both ends. The same conductor inside a single sealed pack, where the enclosure is already continuous, does not — and screening it costs diameter and bend radius you may not have.

Two things to settle before you specify: how the screen is terminated (a pigtail throws away most of the benefit at the frequencies that matter), and whether your EMC target is conducted or radiated. A screen chosen without an answer to either is packaging weight bought on faith.

Where the specification usually goes wrong

• Bend radius is checked last. It is set by the finished diameter, and on a screened 95 mm² cable that is 58 mm minimum static. If the bracket allows 40 mm, no amount of pulling will fix it — but changing to flexible stranding might.
• 200 °C is read as the operating temperature. Class F is a capability, tested to 3,000 h. It is bought for the fault case, the derating headroom and the fifteen-year life, not because the harness runs at 200 °C.
• The wrong ISO part is quoted. Part 5 and part 9 are different documents for different cables. Quoting “ISO 19642” alone tells a supplier almost nothing — see the Standards tab.
• Aluminium and copper are mixed up in the enquiry. ISO puts them in separate parts. If someone is proposing aluminium to save weight, that is parts 6 and 10, not 5 and 9.
• Termination is treated as someone else’s problem. A 150 mm² conductor with 4,788 strands needs a crimp process qualified for it. Tell us the lug and we will tell you whether the stranding you have chosen suits it.

What this cable is not

• Not a UL AWM style. ISO 19642 is an automotive standard. If your equipment is being certified to a North American appliance or industrial route, an AWM style such as UL PFA hook-up wire is the right document, not this one.
• Not an EV charging cable. The cable from the wallbox to the car is covered by EN 50620 / IEC 62893 and needs a completely different construction.
• Not a busbar substitute. Above 250 mm² the answer is usually laminated busbar, not more copper in a jacket.
• Not for repeated dynamic flexing as a drag chain cable. ISO flexible stranding is for routing and vibration, not for a million-cycle festoon duty.

Valores nominales

ISO 19642-5 unscreened — typical dimensions, ISO flexible stranding

Intermediate sizes — 4, 5, 8, 12, 20, 30, 40, 60 and 85 mm² — are standard too and are omitted here only to keep the table readable. * 120 and 150 mm² are not thin-wall sizes defined in ISO 19642; they are a custom construction built to the same materials and test regime. We would rather say so than let you discover it at a design review.

ISO 19642-9 screened — what the braid and sheath cost

Conductor resistance is unchanged by screening — read it from the table above. At 35 mm² the braid and sheath add 3.0 mm of diameter, 33 % of weight and 9 mm of bend radius. Budget for that before the bracket drawings are released, not after.

Stranding class: the free bend radius

ISO flexible and ISO standard stranding give the same conductor resistance and almost the same finished diameter. What changes is how tightly the cable turns:

Roughly 40 % off the minimum bend radius, for no change in cross-section, resistance or voltage class. If a route is failing on packaging, this is the first thing to try — long before anyone proposes dropping a size and accepting the volt drop. The trade is that finer strands cost more and need a crimp process qualified for them, so confirm the lug and the tooling at the same time.

Which part of ISO 19642 is your cable?

“ISO 19642” on its own is not a specification. It is a ten-part family, and the part number tells a supplier the voltage class, the form and the conductor metal in one token.

The two bold rows are what this page covers. Note that -5 and -9 are not simply “unscreened and screened”: part 9 covers round sheathed cables screened o unscreened, and it is the sheath as much as the braid that puts a cable in part 9. If your drawing says “ISO 19642 screened”, the part number you want is -9.

Class F is a temperature class, not a conductor class

This one causes real confusion, because two different standards use the same letter for different things.

• In ISO 19642 / ISO 6722, the class letter is the temperature class: A 85 °C, B 100, C 125, D 150, E 175, F 200, G 225, H 250 — each proven by 3,000 hours of long-term ageing.
• In IEC 60228, class 5 and class 6 describe conductor flexibility and say nothing about temperature.

So a cable can be ISO class F and still have a relatively stiff conductor, and a class 6 conductor can sit inside a 90 °C insulation. When you specify, state both: the ISO temperature class y the stranding you want. An enquiry that only says “class F flexible” is ambiguous, and the difference is 40 % of your bend radius.

What ISO 19642 actually makes the cable survive

The reason this standard is worth quoting is that the qualification regime is unusually specific. In summary, at the 1,000/1,500 V class:

Read the pressure-at-temperature and the humidity-cycling rows together and you have the argument for a thermoset wall in one line: the cable is squeezed by a clamp while hot, then cycled through 190 °C of swing at high humidity, and still has to hold 3 kV.

On OEM approvals

Vehicle manufacturers layer their own material specifications on top of ISO 19642, and a supplier’s approval against one of those belongs to that supplier, for that plant and that compound. We do not claim another company’s OEM approvals, and neither should anyone quoting you. If your programme requires a named OEM specification, tell us which one at enquiry so the qualification route can be agreed before tooling rather than discovered at PPAP.

Qué necesitamos de usted para cotizar

• ISO part: -5 o -9, and screened or unscreened if part 9
• Cross-section, and whether the size is fixed or set by a current and volt-drop target
• Stranding: ISO flexible or ISO standard — or tell us the tightest bend on the route and let us choose
• Temperature class required, and whether it is duty or fault-case driven
• Colour (orange is conventional for HV, but the drawing rules), marking and put-up
• Termination: lug or connector part number, and the crimp process you already have qualified
• Any OEM material specification the programme is being built to

Certificación TEBAOFLEX

Jiangsu TEBAOFLEX Special Cable Co., Ltd posee el certificado UL UL-US-2449012-0 y el certificado cUL UL-CA-2437036-0, ambos de fecha 27 de diciembre de 2024 según el informe E542560-20241225, y el certificado VDE 40060055 dated 28 March 2025. These are company-level certifications and are separate from ISO 19642 qualification, which is a type-test regime against the standard. Send the part, class and size you intend to order and we will confirm the test evidence that applies to it before you commit.

Documentación suministrada con un pedido

• Construction drawing with conductor, stranding, wall, screen and finished dimensions
• Type-test report against the agreed ISO 19642 part and temperature class
• Routine test records for the production batch, including withstand voltage and spark test
• Certificate of conformity referencing the ISO part and class
• Reel and packing list with marking and length detail

For the scope of a specific part, consult the issuing body directly — ISO.