EV Battery Pack Thermal Management Patents: Who Leads 2026
- Filing peaked in 2023 at 12 families, then softened — the dataset shows a flat-to-declining trend rather than sustained growth into the most recent years.
- H01M dominates every record, while F28D heat-exchange apparatus and B60K drive-integration claims appear in only a handful of filings — a sign of where cross-domain claims are still open.
- China and the United States file almost evenly, 22 US and 21 China-origin records, with Europe, India, Canada and WIPO filings trailing well behind.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 56 patent families filed against battery pack thermal management approaches for electric vehicles: liquid cooling plates, immersion cooling, thermal interface materials and fast-charge heating strategies. Every record carries an H01M classification, meaning battery and cell architecture is the anchor point for nearly all claims in this space, with electric-vehicle propulsion (B60L) and heat-exchange apparatus (F28D) appearing as secondary classifications on a smaller subset.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off. Because publication typically lags filing by around eighteen months, the most recent one to two years in any trend chart will understate actual filing activity — treat the tail end of the curve as a floor, not a ceiling.
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Filing trend and technology mix
The filing curve and the IPC breakdown together show a field that is technically narrow — almost every record touches battery cell architecture directly — and whose overall filing pace has already crested.
A peak, not a ramp
Filings rose to a peak of 12 in 2023 from a 2022 midpoint of 7, then eased off. That pattern reads as a maturing claim space rather than one still in early build-out, though the understated final years leave some room for a rebound once late filings publish.
H01M carries almost every record
H01M appears in all 56 families, confirming that thermal management claims here are being written and examined as battery-cell subject matter first. B60L (15 records) captures the propulsion-system integration angle, while F28D (5), B23P (1), B60K (1) and H02J (1) show only thin coverage of general heat-exchange, manufacturing-process and grid-integration framing — areas where claim space is comparatively open.
Shares are the percentage of the 56 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on EV Battery Pack Thermal Management with Eureka
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Try EurekaThe documents anchoring this field
Traction battery pack thermal management assembly and thermal management method (US20240120572A1)
An assembly includes a busbar of a traction battery pack, and at least one terminal of a battery cell of the traction battery pack. The at least one terminal is electrically coupled to the busbar. The assembly further includes a thermal exchange plate, and a thermal interface material that communicates thermal energy to the thermal exchange plate from the at least one terminal, from the busbar, or both.Filed by Ford Global Technologies, LLC; published 2024-04-11.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20110212356A1 | Extruded and Ribbed Thermal Interface for use with a Battery Cooling System | 88 |
| 2 | US20160093931A1 | Battery Pack with Segmented, Electrically Isolated Heat Sink | 50 |
| 3 | US20200220132A1 | Methods and systems for battery pack thermal management | 39 |
| 4 | US20110206969A1 | Overmolded Thermal Interface for use with a Battery Cooling System | 25 |
| 5 | US20160093930A1 | Battery Pack with Segmented, Electrically Isolated Heat Sink | 24 |
| 6 | CN114566741A | 一种新能源汽车动力电池热管理结构 | 23 |
| 7 | CN112151912A | 冷却液流向可控电池包、电池包热管理系统及控制方法 | 14 |
| 8 | US8541127B2 | Overmolded thermal interface for use with a battery cooling system | 14 |
| 9 | US20210399355A1 | Battery module and battery pack thermal control system | 12 |
| 10 | CN116345005A | 电池包热管理控制方法和系统 | 11 |
Citation counts accumulate over time and favour older filings; read them as a signal of influence on later claim drafting, not of current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. 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 patterns stand out once the assignee ranking, the IPC split and the citation table are read together.
The rush already happened
Filing activity climbed to its high point in 2023 and has not sustained that pace since, on the data available. A new entrant filing broad thermal-management claims today is filing into an already-occupied space rather than a greenfield one.
Claims are written as battery-cell subject matter
Almost every filing anchors to H01M, meaning examiners and drafters alike treat thermal management as part of cell and pack architecture rather than as generic heat-exchange engineering. The thin F28D and B60K counts suggest cross-domain claims — thermal hardware framed primarily around heat-exchanger or drivetrain integration — remain comparatively under-filed.
Two home markets, not one
The United States and China each account for roughly two-fifths of receiving-office activity, with Europe, India, Canada and PCT filings trailing well behind. A freedom-to-operate check that only covers one of the two leading jurisdictions misses close to half of the documented activity.
Co-filing is rare
Only one recurring co-assignee pairing shows up in the dataset, and it is a modest three-family collaboration. Most activity here is filed by single assignees rather than through joint-development structures, which is worth noting for anyone scoping a partnership rather than a straight licence.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to ev battery pack thermal management, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and how hard is entry
Recent-year momentum across the tracked assignees, including Ford Global Technologies and Tesla, shows zero new families in the latest year for every name checked — consistent with the broader flat-to-declining trend rather than any single company pulling back.
No one is accelerating right now
Every assignee checked for recent-year momentum, from established automakers to smaller filers, shows no new families in the most recent year of the dataset. Given the eighteen-month publication lag, this likely reflects incomplete late-year data more than an actual stop in R&D.
A long tail, not a duopoly
With only one recurring co-assignee relationship across 56 families, the field looks like a broad set of independent filers rather than a small cluster of tightly linked players. That favours new entrants who can differentiate technically, since there is no dense alliance structure to design around.
Automaker OEMs, not just suppliers, hold core claims
The representative record in this dataset — covering a busbar-integrated thermal interface and thermal exchange plate assembly — is filed by an OEM's technology arm rather than a component supplier, indicating that pack-level thermal claims are being captured close to the vehicle platform.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Ford Global Technologies, LLC | 0 | — |
| Jiazhou Company | 0 | — |
| Valmet Automotive EV Power Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Yuanjie Corporation (USA) | 0 | — |
| TECH & INC | 0 | — |
| Zhao Yaohua | 0 | — |
| Tesla, Inc. (USA) | 0 | — |
| Xu Hongxia | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio building or partnership scoping.
Check the two home jurisdictions together
With US and China receiving-office counts nearly tied, a freedom-to-operate review limited to one of the two will miss close to half of the documented filings. Run both jurisdictions before committing to a design.
Explore assignee coverage in EurekaLook past the H01M core
The thin F28D, B23P and B60K counts are not noise — they mark sub-areas where thermal management claims have not yet been written from a heat-exchanger, manufacturing-process or drivetrain-integration angle.
Map white space in EurekaTreat the citation leaders as prior art, not competitors
The most-cited records in this set date back to earlier filing years and shape how later claims are drafted, but they are not necessarily who is active today. Cross-check citation influence against recent-year momentum before assuming a company is still active.
Trace citation chains in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
Based on citation counts within this dataset, the most-cited records are early filings covering extruded and overmolded thermal interfaces for battery cooling systems and segmented, electrically isolated heat sinks, several of which date back to the early 2010s. High citation counts reflect influence on how later claims were drafted, not current market activity, since citation counts inside any searched corpus naturally favour older records. A company actively filing today may hold no highly-cited records simply because its filings are too recent to have accumulated citations yet.
Filing activity in this dataset peaked in 2023 at 12 families, up from 7 at the 2022 midpoint, and has not sustained that level since. That reads as a flat-to-declining trend rather than continued growth, though the most recent one to two years are understated because publication typically lags actual filing by around eighteen months. A rebound in the final count for 2024-2025 is possible once those records finish publishing.
The IPC breakdown shows H01M present in all 56 families but F28D heat-exchange apparatus, B23P manufacturing processes and B60K drivetrain-integration classifications appearing in only one to five records each. That gap suggests claims framed primarily around heat-exchanger hardware design, cooling-plate manufacturing processes, or drivetrain-level thermal integration remain comparatively open compared with cell-architecture-anchored claims. Immersion-cooling pack sealing and busbar-integrated thermal interface layouts are two specific sub-areas worth checking before drafting.
The United States and China lead receiving-office counts almost evenly, at 22 and 21 records respectively, with Europe, India, Canada and WIPO PCT filings well behind. Anyone running a freedom-to-operate search or planning a filing strategy in this space should cover both the US and China rather than treating either as the primary market, since together they account for the large majority of documented activity.
Co-filing is rare in this dataset — only one recurring co-assignee pairing appears, a three-family collaboration between two individual inventors. The great majority of the 56 tracked families are filed by single assignees, which points to a field built more on independent R&D and internal patent portfolios than on joint-development agreements or cross-licensing structures.
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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.