ABB E-mobility's published application US20230406127A1 (published December 21, 2023, as an A1) carries CPC tags B60L 53/302 (charging stations with cooling), B60L 53/16 (connectors), B60L 53/62 (charging-station control), and H02J 7/0042 (charge control). As a published application its claims are still pending, not granted, so read scope as proposed rather than examined. The proposed invention is narrow and physical: a way to cool a DC fast-charge connector while it sits idle on its holder, rather than only while it is plugged into a car.

“A vehicle charging station includes a holder configured to hold a battery charging connector, and a cooling device configured to remove heat from a heat source of the battery charging connector when the battery charging connector is on the holder.”— U.S. Patent Application 2023/0406127 A1 source

Independent claim 1 states the whole concept compactly: "A vehicle charging station, comprising: a holder configured to hold a battery charging connector; and a cooling device configured to remove heat from a heat source of the battery charging connector when the battery charging connector is on the holder, wherein the cooling device is configured to convectively dissipate the removed heat into ambient air." Two things in that claim are doing the work. First, the cooling targets the connector while it is on the holder — DC fast-charge connectors retain heat in their contacts and any embedded cooling fluid after a session, and a hot connector limits how quickly the next session can ramp; cooling at the holster addresses thermal recovery between vehicles. Second, the heat is rejected by free convection into ambient air, which keeps the holster-side cooling passive and simple.

The dependents fork into a passive branch and an active branch, and the split is the substance of the application. The passive branch (claims 2–4) describes "a passive cooling device configured to be plugged into a socket of the battery charging connector, thereby providing a thermal connection to the heat source." That is a notable mechanical idea: the holster carries a probe that plugs into the connector's own socket, making a thermal bridge into the connector's hottest region. Claim 3 gives it "cooling fins"; claim 4 makes it "a heat pipe comprising condenser fins" — a heat pipe moves the connector's heat to a finned condenser for convective rejection, a genuinely efficient passive path.

The active branch (claims 5–13) adds powered cooling and, importantly, control. Claim 6 makes the active device "a fan"; claim 7 directs its airflow "to at least one passive cooling device in the charging station or to at least one passive device of the charging connector," so the active and passive elements work together — the fan boosts convection over the heat-pipe condenser. Claims 8–10 and 12 add the control layer that B60L 53/62 and H02J 7/0042 anticipate: a temperature sensor with "a control circuit... configured to control the active cooling device in dependence on the temperature measured," a clock-based scheme that activates the fan "in dependence on pre-defined times," and a "mechanical temperature switch" as a simpler thermostatic trigger. Claim 11 swaps the fan for "a pump configured to provide a liquid cooling for the passive cooling device," and claim 13 ties it together with "a liquid-cooled rod configured to be plugged into the power contacts" served by that pump — the liquid analogue of the passive thermal probe, now actively circulated.

Read as a family, the application stakes out holster-side connector cooling across a graded set of implementations: a passive finned/heat-pipe probe at the low end, a fan-assisted version in the middle, and a pumped liquid-cooled rod at the high end, with temperature-, clock-, and switch-based control variants. That is a sensible breadth strategy for a pending claim set — claim 1 captures the core idea (cool the connector on the holder, reject to air), and the dependents try to fence off the obvious ways to build it. The thermal-probe-into-the-socket limitation (claims 2 and 13) is the most distinctive structural feature and the likeliest to carry novelty over generic "cooled charging station" art.

The CPC mix tells the story of a pending claim set hedging across implementations. B60L 53/302 specifically covers charging stations with cooling, B60L 53/16 the connector, B60L 53/62 station control, and H02J 7/0042 charge control — and each maps onto a branch of the claim tree. The passive branch needs none of the control classes; the active branch (fan, pump, liquid rod) is what pulls in B60L 53/62 and H02J 7/0042 through the temperature-sensor, clock, and thermostatic-switch controllers of claims 8–12. The reason holster-side cooling is worth claiming at all is a throughput one: a DC fast-charge connector that finishes a session hot — its contacts and any internal coolant still near their thermal limit — forces the next session to start derated until it recovers, and a busy station loses minutes per stall. Cooling the connector while it rests on the holder shortens that recovery so the next vehicle can ramp sooner. The thermal-probe-into-the-socket idea (claim 2) and its actively-circulated liquid analogue, the "liquid-cooled rod... plugged into the power contacts" (claim 13), are the most distinctive structures because they reach the connector's internal heat source rather than merely blowing air at its shell, and they are the limitations most likely to carry novelty if the broad claim 1 meets prior-art resistance.

The verdict: a coherent, mechanically specific application, but pending — its scope depends on what survives examination, and the broad claim 1 ("a cooling device... convectively dissipate... into ambient air") may face prior-art pressure that pushes patentable weight down into the probe and liquid-rod dependents. Report it as a proposed holster-side connector-cooling claim, flag the application status plainly, and read the substance in the passive-probe and liquid-rod limitations rather than in the abstract's general "remove heat from a heat source" language.