With megawatt charging slow to ramp up, General Motors appears to have an alternative solution to speed up charging for electric commercial vehicles.
This is discussed in a patent filing published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Nov. 26, 2024, although it was originally filed by GM about two years earlier. In the document, GM notes that medium-duty and heavy-duty electric vehicles require large battery packs that can be time-consuming to charge using conventional methods.
General Motors multi-port charging system patent image
GM’s proposed solution involves equipping vehicles with multiple charge ports and dividing packs into smaller “subpacks” that can be connected in parallel. This allows individual subpacks charged from either a single charge port or both ports simultaneously, instead of charging the entire pack through a single port.
This solution is aimed at larger vehicles that would require bigger packs than the average passenger car (don’t be led astray by the passenger car used in the filing’s example, above), but GM’s inclusion of medium-duty vehicles wouldn’t leave out the GMC Hummer EV or the largest GMC and Chevrolet electric pickups, which do fall into that category based on weight.
General Motors multi-port charging system patent image
Megawatt charging was announced several years ago as a charging solution for electric big rigs, but it’s been slow to roll out, partly because of the on-the-ground electrical realities. Tesla confirmed megawatt charging for the Cybertruck and Semi, but its Supercharger V4 tech hasn’t truly yet arrived.
We’re already seeing a number of different solutions to speed up charging based on what’s currently available at the connector level. The GMC Hummer EV essentially uses 400-volt battery packs connected in parallel most of the time, albeit with just one charge port. Meanwhile, Porsche splits its 800-volt Macan battery pack into two 400-volt virtual packs to increase charging speed.