General Motors, which sets much store by the Ultium-based EVs that capture and repurpose waste energy from the battery, hopes to go the whole hog with the tech: Recapture waste heat from ambient humidity, and also the body heat of the occupants in the vehicle.
This energy recovery system can increase the vehicle’s range, reduce battery energy needed for heating, increase charging speed and even enable sportier driving, GM said.
This Ultium platform, which underpins its GMC Hummer EV, can help the vehicle to go as much as 10% more per charge, as well as making charging faster as it preconditions the battery, the company claimed.
Ultium Tech: Explained
Ultium energy recovery recoups typically wasted heat from the battery and other propulsion components, along with humidity from inside and outside the vehicle, to help GM's Ultium-based EVs charge and accelerate quicker, and can even enable performance features.
General Motors
"Having a ground-up EV architecture gives us the freedom to build in standard features like Ultium’s energy recovery capabilities," Doug Parks, GM executive vice president, Global Product Development, Purchasing, and Supply Chain said. "This helps us squeeze more efficiency, performance and overall customer benefit out of our EVs."
Giving a brief overview how the Ultium tech works, GM said that EV batteries, power electronics and other propulsion components produce heat. "The Ultium Platform can recover and store this waste heat from the Ultium propulsion system. Further, it can also capture and use humidity from both inside and outside the vehicle, including body heat from passengers."
The Ultium Platform can then deploy energy stored through the recovery process to heat the cabin more quickly in cold weather than comparable systems found in vehicles with an internal combustion engine, it added.
The energy recovery system also precools the propulsion system to aid the GMC Hummer EV to go 0-60 mph in about 3 seconds, the company said. Basically, GM's energy recovery system reduces the overall need for the car's battery pack to provide power for heating and various vehicle functions.
The Ultium energy recovery system's development dates back to GM’s first electric vehicle, the EV1, produced in the late 1990s, when GM engineers first developed an EV heat pump.
Covered by 11 patents and four publications, the Ultium energy recovery is available on all current Ultium vehicles and is also planned for future Ultium-based ones like Chevrolet Silverado EV and the Cadillac Lyriq.
