Methods and apparatus for utilizing a fluid coupling for heating and energy dissipation in electric vehicles

An apparatus comprising:

• an electric motor having an output shaft;
• a drive shaft to drive one or more wheels of a vehicle;
• a fluid torque converter to operatively couple the output shaft of the electric motor and the drive shaft;
• a clutch movable between an engaged position and a disengaged position, the clutch to fluidly couple the output shaft of the electric motor and the drive shaft when the clutch is in the disengaged position, the clutch to enable the electric motor to bypass the fluid torque converter to mechanically couple the output shaft of the electric motor and the drive shaft when the clutch is in the engaged position;
• interface circuitry;
• machine readable instructions;
• and
• programmable circuitry to at least one of instantiate or execute the machine readable instructions to:
• detect a torque converter slip condition request;
• and
• move the clutch to the disengaged position in response to at least one of:
• determining a cabin temperature that is less than a cabin temperature threshold;
• determining a battery temperature that is less than a battery temperature threshold;
• or
• determining a regeneration mode and at least one of determining a state of charge of the battery exceeding a charge capacity threshold or the battery temperature less than the battery temperature threshold.

At least one non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising machine-readable instructions to cause at least one processor circuit to at least:

• detect a torque converter slip condition request;
• detect a cabin temperature;
• detect a battery temperature of a battery;
• determine a state of charge capacity of the battery;
• detect a non-regeneration mode or a regeneration mode;
• and
• in response to detecting the non-regeneration mode, cause a clutch of a torque converter to move to a disengaged position in response to at least one of:
• determining the cabin temperature is less than a cabin temperature threshold, or determining a battery temperature is less than a battery temperature threshold;
• or
• in response to detecting the regeneration mode, cause the clutch of the torque converter to move to the disengaged position in response to at least one of:
• the state of charge of the battery exceeding a charge capacity threshold or the battery temperature not exceeding the battery temperature threshold.