Future huge GM EVs would possibly speed up charging with a number of connectors

With megawatt charging sluggish to ramp up, Basic Motors seems to have another answer to hurry up charging for electrical business automobiles.

That is mentioned in a patent submitting printed by the US Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO) Nov. 26, 2024, though it was initially filed by GM about two years earlier. Within the doc, GM notes that medium-duty and heavy-duty electrical automobiles require massive battery packs that may be time-consuming to cost utilizing standard strategies.

GM’s proposed answer includes equipping automobiles with a number of cost ports and dividing packs into smaller “subpacks” that may be related in parallel. This enables particular person subpacks charged from both a single cost port or each ports concurrently, as a substitute of charging your entire pack by a single port.

This answer is geared toward bigger automobiles that may require greater packs than the common passenger automotive (do not be led astray by the passenger automotive used within the submitting’s instance, above), however GM’s inclusion of medium-duty automobiles would not miss the GMC Hummer EV or the biggest GMC and Chevrolet electrical pickups, which do fall into that class primarily based on weight.

Basic Motors multi-port charging system patent picture

Megawatt charging was introduced a number of years in the past as a charging answer for electrical huge rigs, however it’s been sluggish to roll out, partly due to the on-the-ground electrical realities. Tesla confirmed megawatt charging for the Cybertruck and Semi, however its Supercharger V4 tech hasn’t actually but arrived.

We’re already seeing quite a few totally different options to hurry up charging primarily based on what’s at the moment out there on the connector stage. The GMC Hummer EV primarily makes use of 400-volt battery packs related in parallel more often than not, albeit with only one cost port. In the meantime, Porsche splits its 800-volt Macan battery pack into two 400-volt digital packs to extend charging pace.