The car is ready; the wire isn't — and the wire's hottest point is the connector. ABB E-mobility's grant US11926231B2, "Electric vehicle charging connector with active cooling" (issued March 12, 2024), addresses exactly that. The CPC is connector-hardware: B60L 53/302 and 53/16 on the charging side, H01R 13/502 (housing) and the cooling-relevant H01R 13/6683 on the connector side. The independent claim's value is the active-cooling architecture for the contacts, not charging in the abstract.
The physics is the reason this matters. At 350-kilowatt DC fast-charge levels, resistive heating in the contacts and cable becomes the limiting factor — push more current and the connector overheats. Active liquid cooling of the contacts lets the connector carry more current without exceeding temperature limits, which is the difference between a 10-minute and a 30-minute charge. A claim that recites the coolant path through the connector is claiming a concrete, manufacturable solution to a real thermal ceiling.
On scope, this is a strong hardware claim. The independent recitation establishes the actively-cooled connector; the dependents that specify the coolant routing, the contact geometry, and the housing integration are the moat. Hardware claims like this have an enforcement advantage — a competitor's cooled connector either reads on the geometry or it does not — and the granted B2 status means the scope has been examined and stands.
ABB, a major charging-hardware vendor, holding this in March 2024 fits the industry's push toward ever-higher charge rates, where thermal management of the connector is the gating constraint. Compared with the company's broader 2023 station-architecture application, this is a focused component claim with clear physical boundaries. The verdict: a defensible, well-anchored hardware grant — read the coolant-path dependents, and recognize that the connector's thermal limit is where fast-charging IP now concentrates.