Tecate was founded in 1975 by Ralph Scarano, a San Diego electronics engineer and entrepreneur with more than 60 years’ experience in the capacitor industry. With the vision that capacitors could be cost-effectively manufactured in Mexico, Ralph selected the border town of Tecate as the location for his first manufacturing facility, giving the company not only its capacitors but its name. By 1987, the company had grown enough to add a new division to meet the audio and automotive industries’ needs for contract manufacturing and full turnkey design. Within a few short years, Tecate had received the QS9000 certification and built a client list that included eight of the ten largest national speaker manufacturers and all three of the major domestic automakers. In 2004, Tecate Group began to design, build, and market ultracapacitor cells and modules. Tecate pioneered the concept of the off-the-shelf module, which allowed customers to test the technology before designing their own custom modules. Tecate is now the leading provider of ultracapacitors for the data storage and smart grid industries, with a high-profile customer list that continues to expand. Most recently, Tecate Group began designing and manufacturing lithium-ion capacitor cells and modules.