GM Applies for Patent for EV with Two Charging Ports

You could fill a pot a whole lot faster with two faucets, you know.

That may not audio like a fantastic engineering perception that revolutionizes transportation in America. But it may be the get started of something.

Normal Motors has filed a patent application with an extremely uncomplicated strategy, but 1 that is illustrative of the way autos are transforming.

It’s an EV with two plugs.

Lasers, Conveyor Belts, and Tear Gas: Vehicle Firms and Their Patents

1st, a fast notice on patents: Automakers are some of the most intense buyers of America’s patent technique. They routinely file for patents they may perhaps hardly ever use.

Tesla, not kidding you listed here, holds a patent for a laser windshield cleaning technique. Toyota holds a patent for an in-motor vehicle fragrance procedure that can also dispense tear gasoline for self-defense. Ford retains a patent for a conveyer belt that delivers goods from the trunk to the front seat.

Even companies that only imagine about building automobiles maintain patents for them. Google holds a patent for a hood sticky enough to immobilize a human becoming. It’s intended as a security system – if you strike a pedestrian with your automobile, they’d adhere to the hood as a substitute of bouncing off and finding a next established of injuries from hitting the road. But picture washing it just after a drive by Louisiana in bug time.

An strategy doesn’t have to be excellent to get paid a patent. It just has to be novel. And carmakers routinely patent strategies they in no way execute.

GM’s Batteries are Currently Two Batteries

GM’s new era of electric vehicles, like the GMC Hummer and Cadillac Lyriq, is crafted on a system the automaker calls Ultium. Ultium is a single, skateboard-like unit of batteries, motors, and suspension that matches beneath a car’s cabin.

Engineers can scale it up or down to develop autos as massive as the Chevy Silverado EV and as little as (probably even more compact than) the Chevy Blazer EV. The structure will underlay an overall generation of GM cars. It’s successful plenty of that even Honda ideas to use it for its very first committed EV, the impending Honda Prologue.

The way GM scales the battery up for bigger autos is, fundamentally, to wire two of them together. The Hummer and Silverado equally use a two-layer battery. So why not demand them independently?

EV Voltage

Some electric cars (EVs), these as Tesla solutions, use a 400-volt architecture. Some, like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, use an 800-volt set up. Electrical charging is difficult and not as basic as 800-volt batteries charging 2 times as quickly as 400-volt batteries. But the 800-volt devices currently on the market place do cost a lot quicker than 400-volt EVs.

What would be even faster? Making use of both of those.

GM’s patent would let end users charge the complete battery from 1 800-volt port, the total battery from a person 400-volt port, or 50 percent of it from one particular of each. The ports are bi-directional, so they could also be used to ability other EVs or equipment in the area.

Electrical Engineers Are the New Garage Tinkerers

The patent could hardly ever come to be a doing the job system. Numerous automaker patents never ever do. This could be just yet another drawing of a sticky hood.

But it illustrates some thing new about the auto marketplace.

Engineers acquired to tease as considerably functionality as attainable from the interior combustion engine through a century of tinkering and attempting wacky matters with hearth.

A pair of charging cords (and a driver applying two charging stations at once though cars line up for their switch) could not be the innovation that makes EVs a lot easier for Us residents to are living with working day-to-working day. But electrical engineers are the new imaginative thinkers who will reshape what our cars charge and do for us.