As megawatt charging is slow to take off, General Motors appears to have another solution for speeding up the charging of electric 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 installed by GM almost two years earlier. In this document, GM notes that medium-duty and heavy-duty electric vehicles require Large battery packs can be time-consuming to charge by using standard methods.
Patent image of General Motors multi-port charging system
GM's proposed solution involves equipping cars with multiple charging ports and dividing packets into smaller “subpacks”. which can be connected in parallel. This allows individual mini-packs to be charged from one charging port or both ports at the same time, instead of charging the entire pack through a single port.
This solution is intended for larger vehicles that may require larger pockets than a typical passenger car (don't be misled by the passenger car used in the filler example, above), but GM's mid-duty vehicle lineup won't be left out. i GMC Hummer EV or the greatest of all GMC and Chevrolet electric pickupswhich fall into that category based on weight.
Patent image of General Motors multi-port charging system
Megawatt charging was announced a few years ago as a solution for charging large electrical appliances, but has been slow to take off, in part due to the realities of low-power electricity. Tesla has confirmed megawatt charging for the Cybertruck and Semi, but its Supercharger V4 technology hasn't really arrived yet.
We are already seeing many different solutions to accelerate charging based on what is currently available at the connector level. The GMC Hummer EV actually uses 400-volt battery packs that are connected in parallel most of the time, although it only has one charging port. Meanwhile, Porsche splits its Macan's 800-volt battery pack into two 400-volt packs to increase charging speed.