Charging Connectors and Cable Cooling Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 55.2% of all 165 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 69.1% — a narrow group has already staked out the core connector-and-coolant-loop claims.
- Filing has cooled from its 2020 peak. 2020 was the peak year at 36 filings; the 2021→2024 span shows a 10% decline (10 down to 9), though 2025-26 counts are still filling in as publications lag filing.
- The technology reaches well beyond road EVs. Alongside the expected B60L and H02J propulsion and grid classes, drone (B64U) and aircraft (B64D, B64C) subclasses each carry a real share of the 165 records — this is not a purely automotive claim space.
Filing growth compares 2021 (10 records) with 2024 (9) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 165 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent records at the intersection of charging connectors and liquid-cooled charging cables — the hardware that lets a plug carry high current without the contacts or the handle overheating. The search string pairs connector and cable-cooling terms with the specific engineering problems that show up in claims: contact temperature, coolant loop design, cable flexibility, mating cycle life, leak detection and handle weight. Records span 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off.
165 published records sit in scope, ranked across 55 assignees. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the fairer unit here because they neutralise continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates — the ranking below is built on that basis.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 165 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filing rose to a peak of 36 in 2020, then eased; the 2021-to-2024 span (the last year publication data can be treated as complete) shows a 10% decline, from 10 filings to 9. 2025 and 2026 figures will continue to fill in as later-filed applications publish.
IPC subclass composition
B60L (electric vehicle propulsion) anchors 69.1% of the 165 records, with H02J (power supply and grid) and H01M (batteries and cells) each present in roughly a fifth and under a fifth of records respectively. A meaningful minority — B64U, B64D and B64C — points to aircraft and drone charging as a real adjacent claim space rather than a footnote.
Shares are the percentage of the 165 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Charging Connectors and Cable Cooling with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about charging connectors and cable cooling and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited prior art and a representative claim
Vehicle Charging System for Charging an Electrical Vehicle (US20220337006A1)
A system and method relating to a liquid cooled cable arrangement includes a charging connector and a liquid cooled charging cable, wherein the liquid cooled charging cable comprises a plurality of conductors for supplying charging current and at least two fluid channels for supply and return liquid coolant, the charging connector comprises a plurality of bus bars and a plurality of contacts, and the charging connector comprises a second part made from a thermally conductive and electrically insulating material to which the bus bars are attached and to which the fluid channels are thermally connected such that heat generated in the contacts during charging can be removed by the liquid coolant.Filed by ABB E-Mobility B.V., published 2022-10-20.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200339010A1 | Battery thermal management system and method | 152 |
| 2 | US20210053689A1 | Vehicle cabin thermal management system and method | 112 |
| 3 | US10960785B2 | Battery thermal management system and method | 75 |
| 4 | US20130307480A1 | Self-discharge for high voltage battery packs | 71 |
| 5 | US20080198615A1 | LED spotlight | 69 |
| 6 | US20200338998A1 | Electric vehicle fast charging and battery cooling system using a charger cooled fluid-to-battery cooled flui… | 44 |
| 7 | US20180170502A1 | Aquatic jet propulsion device | 38 |
| 8 | US20150326012A1 | Electric power supply apparatus and system | 35 |
| 9 | US20130307476A1 | Method and system for servicing high voltage battery packs | 30 |
| 10 | WO2021062305A1 | Vehicle cabin thermal management system and method | 28 |
Citation counts favour older records simply by virtue of having had more time to be cited — read them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not as a ranking of current importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three signals worth acting on before drafting new claims in this space.
The core connector-cooling claim space is already occupied
With the top 5 assignees holding 55.2% of all 165 records and the top 10 holding 69.1%, a new entrant filing on the basic bus-bar-plus-coolant-channel architecture is filing into dense prior art. Differentiation needs to sit in a specific sub-mechanism, not the general arrangement.
Growth has flattened since the 2020 peak
2020 was the high-water mark at 36 filings. The 2021-to-2024 window, the most recent span with complete publication data, shows a 10% decline rather than continued growth — treat 2025-26 figures as still incomplete rather than as evidence of a further slowdown.
Drone and aircraft charging is a live adjacent branch
B64U, B64D and B64C together touch a noticeable slice of the 165 records, showing that liquid-cooled connector and cable claims are being drafted for airborne platforms as well as road vehicles. Filers focused only on automotive comparables risk missing relevant prior art from this branch.
The most-cited records skew toward battery thermal management
The most-cited record in this corpus, on battery thermal management, has accumulated 152 citations — well ahead of the connector-specific filings. That gap reflects age and adjacency more than present-day relevance; a fresh connector claim should be checked against recent filings, not just the highly-cited ones.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to charging connectors and cable cooling, with the prior art for and against each one.
The assignee landscape
55 companies make up the full ranking returned for this dataset — not a top-50 or top-100 cut, but the complete field of assignees with records in scope.
One filer sits well ahead of the field
The leading assignee holds 34 records against a fifth-place count of 6 and a tenth-place count of 4 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-plus-long-tail field rather than an even spread.
The mid-field thins out quickly
By fifth place the count is already down to 6 records, and by tenth place to 4 — most of the ranked field is clustered on single-digit filing counts rather than sustained programmes.
A long tail of single- and low-filing entrants
Beyond the top 10, the remaining assignees in the ranked field of 55 companies each contribute a small number of records — consistent with component suppliers, cable makers and OEM subsidiaries filing narrowly around specific mechanisms rather than broad architectures.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Joby Aero, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Tesla, Inc. | 0 | — |
| ABB (Schweiz) AG | 0 | — |
| ChargePoint, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Xinzhou Power Supply Company, State Grid Shanxi Electric Power Corp. | 0 | — |
| Green ELMF Cable Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated core and a thinner set of adjacent branches. Two directions follow from that.
Check freedom-to-operate before drafting
With 69.1% of records held by the top 10 assignees, a new filing on the general connector-plus-coolant-loop architecture needs a specific point of novelty. Run a freedom-to-operate check against the leading assignees' portfolios before committing claim language.
Run an FTO search in EurekaTrack the aircraft and drone branch separately
B64U, B64D and B64C filings suggest airborne charging connectors are being claimed on their own trajectory, distinct from road EV comparables. Monitoring this branch separately avoids missing relevant art when it later crosses back into ground-based systems.
Set up a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions about this patent landscape
Across the 165 records in this dataset, one assignee leads with 34 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked assignee at 6 and the tenth-ranked at 4. The top 5 assignees combined hold 55.2% of all records and the top 10 hold 69.1%, so the field is concentrated at the top with a long tail of companies each holding only a handful of filings. This pattern is typical of a component-level technology where a few large players set the baseline architecture and many suppliers file narrowly around specific mechanisms.
Filing peaked at 36 records in 2020 and has since eased. The most recent complete three-year span, 2021 to 2024, shows a 10% decline, from 10 filings down to 9, rather than continued growth. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years should not yet be read as a further drop-off.
Yes. While B60L (electric vehicle propulsion) covers 69.1% of the 165 records, IPC subclasses for unmanned aerial vehicles and aircraft equipment each carry a meaningful share of the same dataset. That indicates liquid-cooled connector and cable designs are being actively claimed for drone and aircraft charging as well as road vehicles, and a search limited to automotive comparables would miss relevant prior art from that branch.
US20220337006A1, assigned to ABB E-Mobility B.V. and published 2022-10-20, claims a charging connector paired with a liquid-cooled charging cable in which the cable carries current-supply conductors plus at least two fluid channels for coolant supply and return. The connector itself includes bus bars and contacts mounted to a thermally conductive, electrically insulating part that is thermally connected to the fluid channels, so heat generated at the contacts during charging is carried away by the coolant. Anyone designing a connector where the coolant path runs to the contact area through a similar insulating-but-conductive interface should review this filing directly rather than relying on the abstract alone.
The core architecture — bus bars, contacts and coolant channels in a liquid-cooled connector — is already densely claimed by the leading assignees. Thinner areas in this dataset include leak-detection sensing integrated into the coolant loop, handle-weight reduction through material substitution, mating-cycle life testing protocols, and cable flexibility under repeated bend cycles. These sit adjacent to the dense B60L and H02J core and warrant a closer freedom-to-operate check rather than being assumed open, since a thin count in this dataset does not guarantee no prior art exists elsewhere.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.