GM Files Patent For Dual Charge Port System For EVs
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GM has filed a patent application for a device described as “Adaptive Fast-Charging Of Multi-Pack Battery System In A Mobile Platform Having Dual Charge Ports.” The device outlined in the patent relates to direct current fast-charging (DCFC) architectures and adaptive charging methodologies for use with all-electric vehicles and other mobile platforms with dual charging ports. The system could be useful for GM’s upcoming range of new EVs.
The GM patent filing has been assigned application number US 11,336,101 B2 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and was published on May 17th, 2022. The patent was originally filed on February 3rd, 2020, and lists several Michigan-based engineers as the inventors, including Lei Hao, Yue-Yun Wang, Suresh Gopalakrishnan, Chandra S. Namuduri, Rashmi Prasad, and Madhusudan Raghavan.
The patent describes a charging station for use with electric vehicles and mobile platforms (including battery-electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles as well) and an adaptive charging system that provides power via a dual-port architecture, enabling a reconfigurable multi-pack battery system to receive maximum charging power while undergoing direct current fast-charging, or alternatively, dual low-voltage charging.
With the two power cables plugged into the vehicle, the first charge port can provide either low or high charging voltage from the charging station, while the second port provides low charging voltage. When the station is able to supply high charging to the first port, a controller establishes a series-connected configuration, and continues to charge the battery via the first charging port with high voltage. If only low voltage is available, both ports use low voltage.
This system would obviously be useful for integration with GM’s latest range of all-electric vehicles. General Motors’ battery packs have a “double-layer” design that enable it to switch between a series and parallel configuration, which could allow for a dual charging system as needed. This would not only enable theoretically faster charge times via low-voltage sources, but would also enable the batteries to be charged while supplying electrical power to ancillary devices, such as power tools. Another possible use case would be the use of low-voltage in extreme temperatures to condition the powertrain for high-voltage quick charging.
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Wooooooow. Great idea if it works.
Look at that, Automakers that spend money on BEV R&D coming up with great new ideas.
Way to go GM….I am on record saying that GM will overtake VW and Toyota to become the Worlds Biggest Automaker with their Switch to BEV’s.
I honestly cannot think of any other Legacy Automaker that is close in Tech to GM.
Obviously VW is ahead on manufacturing of BEV’s but we shall see how long that lasts when GM finally gets their Factories up and running in scale.
GM will overtake VW as they aren’t abandoning ICE. Toyota will become dominant as they aren’t going all in on wokeness. Go woke, go broke. The BEV fad is crashing fast. We’ll see if Buick even gets one over here before Chevy starts discontinuing EV models.
That picture looks like a Ram
9,100 pounds and two chargers necessary sucking down energy from coal-fired or other fossil-fueled generators. I’m still waiting to hear how this actually helps the planet.
Coal-fired and fossil-fuel generators also power the gas pumps. Only electricity can be obtain from the sky (solar) and for free.
Yeah…. Those solar panels that are 10% efficient, turn most of the light that hits them into heat, lose 50% their capacity in 8 years and cost a fortune to replace. It would be more efficient to just grow green space, let it turn into fossil fuels naturally and harvest it. Chlorophyll is 86% efficient. Solar sucks….that’s why it makes up only 1% of our grid.
Jake – Man – talk about Chicken Little….. haha.
My Solar Panels are 8 years old this year – I have 38 panels which were the cheapest i could find back in 2014 – but I have noticed NO degredation in output. You said they all lose 50 % of their capacity..
Perhaps my living in a cool climate has extended the life of the panels since I simply get about 1/3 rd of the expected electricity that I would get in Southern Florida. IF THOSE panels did degrade somewhat – its not a problem at all due to the HUGE dollar value of electricity THOSE panels have already made.
My panels produce electricity (including wiring and inverter losses) of about 14 % – but current panels are much better – 20% at least.
And that hogwash about it making the roof its on hotter is totally NONSENSICAL. The panels are located 6″ proud of the roof line, which allows a cooling breeze under them, and besides – since around 15% of the heat is turned into electricity (I said 14% overall because unfortunately 1% of the manufactured electricity ALSO is wasted as heat in the wiring and the 2 basement mounted inverters), there is only 85% of the heat from the sun remaining, and there is NOTHING worse for a roof than the extremely hot DIRECT sunlight in the dog days of summer, which my panels shield against.
As I say, more modern panels are better in every way, and leave the roof even cooler.
Hey Bill Howland:
” You can be sure if it’s Westinghouse “. That says it all on the Georgia nuclear plant hardware.
I wish the Georgia nuclear plant owner and contractor the best in their future control of construction and commissioning costs.
BTW: With the closure and demolition of coal fired electric generating plants our kWh rates are going into the stratosphere. Advise living off the grid. Many souls in the Colorado, California, Idaho. Montana, Oregon and Washington forests are already doing so.
Raymond J Ramirez
You state in your comment: ” Only electricity can be obtain from the sky (solar) and for free.”
Solar fields are capital intensive, require maintenance, and need replacement of panels. So this invalidates your claim for free.
Electricity is simply the movement of electrons along a conductor pathway. Something needs to excite these electrons to move and exchange themselves amongst their neighboring atoms, this flow can be created by by magnetism, chemical reaction, or radiation heat reaction = solar. All these methods have associated costs. The sting and power energy in electricity is the amps or amperes which are discharged electrons always seeking to restabilize themselves by trying to get back to their home, mother earth. BTW: We have never lost a single electron.
The least expensive method to date to produce electricity is by nuclear fushion or fission, creating heat to boil water making steam to turn a turbine that has outlaying magnets to excite the electrons to flow through a wire to produce electricity.
DOE is fevorously working on small nuclear reactors for each town in America. Similar to the nuclear reactors in aircraft carriers and submarines.
Also a stellar example of least cost electric power is the Palo Verde Nuclear generating complex in Tonopah, Arizona.
Next in line for least cost electric power generation is fossil fueled power plants. With precipators and scrubbers these facilities today mostly emit water vapor and modicum amounts of carbon dioxide. Funny that carbon dioxide is beneficial to plant life, photosynthesis, and soft drink dispensing.
Wind farms are high maintenance and are killing bazillions of birds.
Now we get to your solar fields. Thermo solar like in Central Nevada is very expensive to install and maintain. Also the mirrors and radiation kill bazillions of birds.
Flat panel solar fields are expensive to erect and have a limited life.
My vote is what the DOE is developing in the form of small nuclear power units.
Electricity is not free. Harnessing wind, water, sun, coal, natural gas, atoms, peat, wood, Lithium, Cobalt, all have a cost and risk.
That concludes today’s second grade science lesson in basic electricity.
Hope you got something out of this lesson.
David Alan Murray:
You said, “….The least expensive method to date to produce electricity is by nuclear fushion or fission…”
Please Name 5 power plants that work by FUSION. Hint: the real number is less than ZERO – since gobs of money, resources and electric energy have been expended trying to get SOMETHING, ANYTHING to work.
As far as a “Least Expensive Method” How about those Westinghouse AP1000 DUAL Nuclear plants; check out Georgia Power’s ongoing Extravaganza with COSTS from these ‘Least Expensive Method’.
Originally expected to cost $14 Billion (at a loaded cost of 11 cents per kwh – DOUBLE what Rate Payers HAD been paying for energy charges) – the likely figure (see the link below) is $34 Billion, or a loaded cost of over 26 cents/ kwh for ENERGY produced at the plant. Add another dime for delivery charges and it simply will be too expensive to drive any electric car with the power generated by the 2 new “COST REDUCED” plants.
As to why these overly-advertised EXTREMELY LOW-COST plants cost so much to make – perhaps the Chinese who also have a few of these could lend a hand into practical cost reduction… They sure need it.
Bill Howland:
Thanks for your rebuttal comment. From what I understand by listening to Rick Perry and reading about what DOE’s main current focus, it’s all about small nuclear reactors to produce electricity, albeit by either fission or fushion. DOE has 80,000+ workers, so I hope they succeed at this objective.
Secondly, when I worked for Kerr-McGee they were a significant player in the mining and processing of Uranium for hockey pucks for fuel rods and also Plutonium for the trigger mechanisms on atomic bombs.
Roy Smith, a big boss at Kerr-McGee in Oklahoma City told me that nuclear is the most efficient and least costly way to produce electricity. Apparently the French and Ukranians think so too.
As to a stellar example of a very successful nuclear generating station, check out the Palo Verde Nuclear generating station in Tonopah, Arizona.
Lastly, the Georgia nuclear power plant under construction, from my remote view, it appears the general contactor has failed at construction management or the designers and owner is swamping the GC with change orders.
Also in this era of tremendous inflation, building materials and equipment costs have gone into the stratosphere.
Hi David Alan Murray –
I posted that comment 3 times but GM authority doesn’t like links….. To read up on the Ap1000 fiasco when on oilprice dot com search on vogtle (if they ever finish they’ll have 4 nuclear reactors on site and it will be bigger than Palo Verde).
Thanks for the background information… Of course people whose paycheck depends on Nuclear will always talk it up – but I believe the WHOLE picture is that the industry is mediocre at best (think Price – Anderson – no insurance company in their right minds would touch it).
My basic point was – at the PLANNING stage, intelligent people couldn’t believe how the go ahead was given for this project (the 2 other AP1000’s supposed to be built were CANCELLED after intelligent green eye shade people worked the numbers) – seeing as it was TWICE as expensive for CONSUMERS and they’d never accept it.
Of course now, it is around FIVE TIMES as expensive as anything else….
My point of confusion is – when you read the Westinghouse Literature – the plant has plenty of cost saving ideas…. I have no idea why they didn’t translate into actual reality.
Hi Bill Howland:
Construction costs today are insane due to the costs of materials, labor, management and equipment. Caterpillar is planning to adjust their wholesale machinery prices to their dealers on an incremental basis over the next year with the final adjustment result amounting to a 29% increase.
A general contractor takes the bid proposals of their subcontractors and adds 20 to 30% on their submittals which already have the subcontractors profit margins of 20 to 40% built in. Then the sub tier contractors to the subcontractor have their profit margins built in. Lastly when everything is tallied the general contractor will add another final profit margin layer. Contract change orders by the engineers and owner are gold mines for the GC, subs and sub tiers.
NRC oversees the whole enchilada and makes additional changes in real time during construction.
That’s why a nuke plant is so spendy. The maximum strength and quality of materials is used such as 10,000 lb. concrete and special coated rebar. The Hiller actuators are the most expensive on the planet, as a couple of examples. So it all adds up.
When completed you have a masterpiece of modern engineering and technology.
Think of all the oil that will be saved from no oil changes every 5-6k miles 3-4 times per year in millions and millions of vehicles!
You do know that when you drop off your spent oil, or an oil change center changes your oil it goes back to refineries to be cracked into diesel right???? None of that oil is wasted. In the meantime, oodles of of goes into the actual making of an EV…….
Diesel. Oil burners. My point is, cars with ICE engines need regular maintenance. I realize that spent engine oil is used for Diesel, “used oil” fired heaters, etc. Then we have the old ICE vehicles that burn and leak oil. Lets not forget about the people that pour oil to start or accelerate a fire or dump it down the drain or on the ground – we all know that happens.
Oodles of oil goes into making an EV you say. Not ICE vehicles? Not the ships sailing across the oceans to deliver the oil to the USA? Not the semis that carry it to the refineries or from the refineries as fuel to the fueling stations?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not for or against EVs, people can drive what they wish. But it is funny to me how people argue against EVs and the mining for rare-Earth minerals yet don’t realize what goes into a conventional vehicle or the steps it takes to drill for oil, pump it out of the ground, ship it, refine it, ship it to gas stations, pump it back into the ground as fuel, then pump it back out of the ground into your vehicle, then burn it.
Wow, so now you can tick off all the other EV drivers by taking up 2 charging spots for half an hour and look like a d***. First a powered trailer that costs 4X as much, now filling up 2 spots at the charging station. The diversity hires at gm’s EV department have no shortage for stupid.
Um, Jake − they are proposing a new charging station with two connectors. This is a far-field invention that requires significant infrastructure and vehicle changes. By the time it sees the light of day, we will have significantly more renewable energy sources on line. ** Are you just trolling all of us? **