In 1954, the company's lead-acid battery operations were split into two separate divisions - automotive and industrial, so the company could adequately service these different markets. Exide entered the dry-cell battery industry in 1957 when it acquired the Ray-O-Vac Company, then the country's second largest producer of dry-cell batteries.

The following year, Exide opened its Engineering and Development Center in Yardley, PA., as a corporate R&D facility. Exide went on to acquire the Wisconsin Battery Company of Racine, Wis. The renamed Wisco Company added motorcycle and specialty batteries to the growing Exide product line. In 1969, NASA's first lunar landing module used the stored energy of Exide's solar-recharged batteries. NASA took silver-zinc Exide batteries to the moon on all of the Apollo space missions. During the gasoline crunch of the 1970s, Exide provided batteries for the small, fuel-efficient vehicles that were popular at the time. By 1987, with Exide's acquisition of General Battery Corporation, the company's product line became broad enough to fit nearly every vehicle on U.S. roads.