Power electronics charge coupler for vehicle-to-vehicle fast energy sharing

Abstract

A power electronics charge coupler (PECC) unit allows vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) energy transfer by forming a bidirectional buck/boost converter for supplying rapid energy transfer with wide input-output battery voltage and battery voltage levels. The PECC unit embeds DC-DC converter modules into the charging handles of the PECC unit. Each of the charging handles includes a half-bridge of the DC-DC converter and parasitic inductance of a cable between charging handles is utilized as a portion of the filter inductor for the converter. The PECC unit handles are each configured to connect to an electric vehicle and are dynamically configurable in one of four modes of operation based on the battery voltage of the electric vehicles to which the PECC unit is connected and based on which of the electric vehicles is designated as the receiver vehicle and which is designated as the supplier vehicle.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.