| 摘要 |
A source of environmental pollution is the burning of fuel by the transportation vehicles (e.g., cars, trucks). The use of electric vehicles (EVs) is perceived as an essential step towards better utilization of energy. Current EVs make use of an electric engine and a battery pack that provides energy to that engine. The technology of electric engines is well developed because of the common use of such engines in trains, submarines and industrial facilities. But, while the battery packs used in EVs have made a lot of progress in the last couple of years, these battery packs still have problems. These battery packs are expansive, heavy, and limited in the amount of energy that they can provide. This obstacle is a major factor that limits the use of EVs today in the mass market. Described herein is an improved EV battery pack system. |
| 主权项 |
1. A switcher chip for use in interconnecting a set of energy sources, comprising:
a main negative terminal; a cascading negative terminal; a main positive terminal; a cascading positive terminal; a plurality of energy source terminals; and a plurality of switches, wherein the switcher chip is configured such that: when a set of energy sources are connected to the switcher chip via the plurality of energy source terminals and a first subset of the plurality of switches are closed and the remainder of the switches are open, the set of energy sources are connected in parallel with each other and current is able to flow out the main positive terminal but is not able to flow out the cascading positive terminal, when a set of energy sources are connected to the switcher chip via the plurality of energy source terminals and a second subset of the plurality of switches are closed and the remainder of the switches are open, the set of energy sources are connected in series with each other and current is able to flow out the main positive terminal but is not able to flow out the cascading positive terminal, when a set of energy sources are connected to the switcher chip via the plurality of energy source terminals and a third subset of the plurality of switches are closed and the remainder of the switches are open, at least two of the energy sources in the set of energy sources are connected in series with each other and current is able to flow out the cascading positive terminal but is not able to flow out the main positive terminal, when a set of energy sources are connected to the switcher chip via the plurality of energy source terminals and a fourth subset of the plurality of switches are closed and the remainder of the switches are open, a subset set of energy sources are connected in parallel with each other, at least one energy source is electrically disconnected from each of the other energy sources, and current is able to flow out the main positive terminal but is not able to flow out the cascading positive terminal, and when a set of energy sources are connected to the switcher chip via the plurality of energy source terminals and a fifth subset of the plurality of switches are closed and the remainder of the switches are open, a subset set of energy sources are connected in series with each other and at least one energy source from the set is electrically disconnected from each of the other energy sources of the set. |
