General Motors has just published a patent detailing a clever solution, making it possible to recharge an electric car more quickly thanks to two charging ports.
Developing an electric car is a real challenge for manufacturers and especially their engineers. Indeed, this type of vehicle has many constraints, related in particular to energy storage and recharging. While the number of connected vehicles should explode over the next few years, it is indeed essential to find solutions to reduce the time spent at the terminal.
Most of the time, this involves increasing the charging power that the car can handle, in particular by equipping it with an 800-volt system. This allows to benefit from higher charging power throughout the recharge compared to the more traditional 400 volt system. This is particularly the case of the Porsche Taycan, which can then take advantage of a power of up to 270 kW on compatible terminals, allowing it to recover up to 100 kilometers of autonomy (WLTP) in just 5 short minutes. Where to go from 5 to 80% in less than 23 minutes.
An innovation that is now tending to become more democratic since the 800 volt system is found on the Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5. The problem with the 800 volt system is that the charging time is slightly longer on a 400 volt terminal.
Two charging ports
But on the side of General Motors, we found an alternative solution, which could be found in the future production cars of the American group. Indeed, our American colleagues from Green Car Report have managed to get their hands on a patent recently filed by the firm with the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office), the organization in charge of registering these documents.
This details a system that is innovative to say the least, which consists of installing two charging ports on electric cars, one next to the other, in order, in particular, tospeed up the charging of dual-layer packs. This device made it possible to take better advantage of the two-level battery pack system (over 200 kWh), notably fitted to the GMC Hummer EV.
800 + 400 volts for super fast charging
The advantage of the two-level pack is that these two layers can operate in series or in parallel, allowing in the second case to take advantage of a recharge at 800 volts. But the patent and its system consisting of two side-by-side CCS ports, describes the possibility of passing the layers in series, in order to charge each half of the pack to 400 volts simultaneously, via two different chargers. What greatly accelerate charging on conventional 400 volt terminals.
The patent even indicates the possibility of accepting charging at 800 volts on one port and 400 volts on the second connector. Contrary to what we have read on other media, the patent does not indicate the possibility of using the two ports at 800 volts at the same time. It actually specifies the possibility for the car to choose, on the fly, the port to be configured at 800 volts so that charging is as fast and transparent as possible for the driver.
Charge two cars with a single terminal
Moreover, thanks to the function V2L, it will be possible to deliver to another device, 400 volts on one of the two ports while charging the car with 400 or 800 volts on the other. We can then imagine a situation in which we have a single charging station recharging two vehicles at the same time, in cascade.
But be careful, because if General Motors has filed this patent, there is no guarantee that it will really be used for production vehicles. In addition, the firm does not give precise information on the impact on charging time.
In Berlin, a company offers to charge its electric car by plugging into streetlights. A rather clever idea!
Read more
To follow us, we invite you to download our Android and iOS application. You can read our articles, files, and watch our latest YouTube videos.