Method and apparatus for charging an electric vehicle using a charging cable

Abstract

A method and an apparatus (100) use a charging cable (108) for charging an electric vehicle. The apparatus has a first voltage converter (110) to transform a charging voltage applied to the charging cable (108) to a high voltage for a high-voltage battery (104) of the electric vehicle. The apparatus (100) also has a second two-level voltage converter (112) to charge a low-voltage battery (106) of the electric vehicle by transforming the high voltage to an intermediate voltage for an intermediate circuit (118) and transforming the intermediate voltage to a low voltage for the low-voltage battery (106). The intermediate circuit (118) is designed to precharge the charging cable (108) using the intermediate voltage before the beginning of a charging process.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.