US 11,685,278 B1Granted

Disengagement of electric vehicle charging cable

AssigneeFreewire Technologies, Inc.

InventorsJamshed Nabizada, Ravi Lavu, Anton Cwik, Ajay Somepalli

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Abstract

In order to ensure safe and reliable disconnection of charging cables from electric vehicles during occurrence of error conditions preventing normal disengagement of such charging cables, the systems and methods disclosed herein provide a vehicle charging system including a system controller configured to present via a display a user-selectable manual disconnection option when the vehicle is not receiving a charging current, receive an indication of a user selection of the manual disconnection option, and control a charge controller of the vehicle charging system to reset in order to terminate any charging session and to disengage the charging cable. In some embodiments, the charge controller may be configured or controlled to send a session termination signal to a vehicle charge controller of the vehicle either before resetting or as part of a startup process.

Claims17

Dependent claims

A vehicle charging system for charging a vehicle, comprising:

a power input port configured to receive input electrical power from a power source;
a coupling configured to receive a charging current associated with the input electrical power and to provide an electrical interconnect between the vehicle charging system and the vehicle in order to provide the charging current to the vehicle;
a charge controller comprising one or more logic circuits configured to:
establish a charging session between the vehicle charging system and the vehicle via electronic communication with a vehicle charge controller of the vehicle;
and
control supply of the charging current to the coupling in order to provide the charging current to the vehicle during the charging session;
and
a system controller comprising one or more processors configured to:
receive an indication of a user selection of a manual disconnection option at an input component of the vehicle charging system from a user of the vehicle charging system;
and
control the charge controller to reset by causing the charge controller to proceed through a power cycle process in order to reboot the charge controller in order to disengage the coupling from the vehicle in response to receiving the indication of the user selection of the manual disconnection option.

8 more elements

A tangible, non-transitory computer-readable medium storing executable instructions for charging a vehicle that, when executed by one or more processors of a vehicle charging system, cause the vehicle charging system to:

establish a charging session between the vehicle charging system and the vehicle via electronic communication between a charge controller of the vehicle charge system and a vehicle charge controller of the vehicle;
control a supply of a charging current to a coupling connecting the vehicle charging system with the vehicle in order to provide the charging current to the vehicle during the charging session;
receive an indication of a user selection of a manual disconnection option at an input component of the vehicle charging system from a user of the vehicle charging system;
and
control the charge controller to reset by causing the charge controller to proceed through a power cycle process in order to reboot the charge controller in order to disengage the coupling from the vehicle in response to receiving the indication of the user selection of the manual disconnection option.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.