Onboard Charger Process Automation Patents: Leaders & Gaps 2026
- Small, concentrated field. just 15 patent families sit inside this search, with filing peaking at 4 in 2020 and no clear growth since.
- Power and protection dominate the claims. H02J power-supply and grid circuitry appears in 9 of the 15 records, with B60R vehicle-accessory claims close behind at 7.
- One family line drives the citation count. the three most-cited records all trace to a single 'power distribution and circuit protection' invention, cited well above anything else in the set.
What this patent landscape actually covers
This landscape tracks patent families that combine onboard charger (OBC) hardware or control claims with automated assembly, SMT line automation, or automated testing language. It is a narrow intersection: automotive power electronics on one side, manufacturing and test automation on the other. The 15 families found here are not the whole onboard charger patent universe, and not the whole automation patent universe — they are the small overlap where an applicant chose to claim both in the same document.
Because the search string requires both concepts in title, abstract or claims, absence from this set does not mean an assignee has no automation activity around OBC hardware — it means they have not claimed automation and OBC together in a way this string catches. Treat the numbers below as a floor on activity at this specific intersection, not a ceiling on the broader field.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 15 families: how filing has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing trend is flat, not rising
Filings sat at zero in 2017, rose to a peak of 4 in 2020, and had fallen back to 2 by the 2022 midpoint. There is no sustained upward trend across the window, and the most recent year is necessarily undercounted because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. Read this as a niche that had a short burst of interest around 2020 rather than a growing category.
Power and protection circuitry lead the claims
H02J (power supply and grid systems) appears in 9 of the 15 records and B60R (vehicle parts and accessories) in 7, together accounting for most of the claim activity. B60L electric-vehicle propulsion, B60K drive systems, H01R connectors, H02H protective circuits and H05K printed-circuit assemblies each appear only twice, and B05C coating apparatus appears once — a long tail of single- or double-occurrence subclasses sitting underneath the two dominant codes.
Shares are the percentage of the 15 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Onboard Charger Process Automation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about onboard charger process automation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this set
Ground fault interrupt automatic test method for electric vehicle (US20130241482A1)
The method describes processor-based automated testing of a ground fault interrupt circuit for electric vehicle supply equipment: a simulated ground fault signal is fed to the interrupt circuit, a processor confirms the circuit sensed it, the processor then commands a utility power contactor to close while the interrupt circuit is disabling closure, and the method verifies the contactor stayed open.Filed by AeroVironment, published 2013-09-19 — one of the earlier automated-test claims in this dataset.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200274375A1 | Power distribution and circuit protection for a mobile application having a high efficiency inverter | 174 |
| 2 | WO2020193466A1 | Power distribution and circuit protection for a mobile application having a high efficiency inverter | 80 |
| 3 | US11368031B2 | Power distribution and circuit protection for a mobile application having a high efficiency inverter | 38 |
| 4 | US20240047982A1 | Contactor damage and diagnostics | 23 |
| 5 | US20220337070A1 | Contactor damage and diagnostics | 12 |
| 6 | US11784501B2 | Contactor damage and diagnostics | 10 |
| 7 | US20130241482A1 | Ground fault interrupt automatic test method for electric vehicle | 5 |
| 8 | EP3942662A1 | Power distribution and circuit protection for a mobile application having a high efficiency inverter | 2 |
Citation counts reward older filings simply for having been in the corpus longer; treat this table as a map of influence on later filers, not a ranking of current technical importance.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (8 of 8 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the trend, the IPC mix and the citation table.
The burst has already passed
Filing rose to a peak of 4 families in 2020 and had halved to 2 by the 2022 midpoint, with 2017 showing no activity at all. A short spike followed by decline suggests a narrow window of applicant interest rather than an emerging category — new entrants should check whether the underlying need still exists before assuming this space is warming up.
Power and protection circuitry is the crowded lane
H02J power-supply claims and B60R vehicle-accessory claims together dominate the set, while B60L, B60K, H01R, H02H and H05K each carry only one or two records. A new filing that stays inside power-distribution or protection-circuit claim language is entering the most occupied part of this landscape.
One invention family shapes the prior art
The three highest-cited records in this set are all versions of the same 'power distribution and circuit protection for a mobile application' invention, led by a record cited 174 times. Anything claiming automated contactor testing or protection-circuit diagnostics should expect this family to surface in a freedom-to-operate search.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to onboard charger process automation, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claims — and who has gone quiet
Assignee activity in this intersection is thin: 15 families spread across a small number of named applicants, several with roots stretching back over a decade and none showing filings in the latest year.
No assignee is currently active
Every tracked assignee — including Eaton Intelligent Power, General Electric, Lear, AeroVironment and FCA US — shows zero filings in the most recent year. That is consistent with the overall flat-to-declining trend and means recent competitive signal has to come from the earlier filing history, not from current-year activity.
Filing here is mostly solo
Only one co-assignee pairing appears across the dataset — Albert Flack together with AeroVironment — and it appears once. There is no visible pattern of joint filing or cross-licensing structure to map in this niche; most records carry a single named applicant.
A small set of families anchors the field
The most-cited table is dominated by two invention lines — the power-distribution/circuit-protection family and the contactor damage-and-diagnostics family — which together account for most of the citation weight in this set. New filers should map their claims against both before assuming clear ground.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Eaton Intelligent Power Limited | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| Lear Corporation | 0 | — |
| FLACK ALBERT | 0 | — |
| AeroVironment, Inc. | 0 | — |
| FCA US LLC | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to a narrow, quiet niche with a small number of anchor families. Two follow-ups are worth doing before committing a filing strategy.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on the top-cited family
The power-distribution and circuit-protection family accounts for the bulk of citation weight in this set across three related publications. Any automated-testing or contactor-diagnostic claim should be checked against it directly rather than assumed clear.
Explore prior art in EurekaTest the white-space chips against live claims
Coating-line automation, connector-level test sequencing and PCB assembly automation each show only one or two records in this set. Before assuming open ground, pull the full claim text for those records rather than relying on the IPC count alone.
Search white space in EurekaCommon questions about onboard charger process automation patents
This dataset identifies 15 patent families that combine onboard charger (OBC) hardware or control claims with automated assembly, SMT line automation, or automated testing language, covering filings from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off. That is a narrow intersection search, not a count of all onboard charger patents or all manufacturing-automation patents — it only captures documents that claim both concepts together. Broader searches on either term alone would return substantially more records.
Based on the filing trend here, activity peaked at 4 families in 2020 and had fallen to 2 by the 2022 midpoint, with zero filings recorded in 2017. That pattern reads as a short burst of applicant interest rather than sustained growth, and none of the tracked assignees show filings in the most recent year. Because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, the last one to two years in any such trend will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be, but the multi-year decline from the 2020 peak predates that lag effect.
The tracked assignees in this space include Eaton Intelligent Power, General Electric, Lear, AeroVironment and FCA US, but none show any filings in the latest tracked year, and the dataset as a whole contains only 15 families. Rather than one dominant leader, the field shows a small group of applicants with historical filings and a citation table dominated by a single AeroVironment-linked invention family on power distribution and circuit protection. Co-filing is rare — only one co-assignee pairing appears in the entire dataset.
US20130241482A1 describes a processor-based method for automatically testing a ground fault interrupt circuit in electric vehicle supply equipment: it injects a simulated ground fault signal, confirms the circuit detected it, commands a utility power contactor to close while the interrupt circuit is disabling closure, and verifies the contactor did not actually close. It was filed by AeroVironment and published in September 2013, making it one of the earlier automated-test claims in this specific dataset. Anyone building automated ground-fault or contactor-safety test routines for EV charging equipment should review its claim scope directly rather than relying on the abstract alone.
The IPC breakdown shows heavy concentration in H02J power-supply circuitry (9 of 15 records) and B60R vehicle accessories (7 of 15), while subclasses like B05C coating apparatus, H01R connectors, H02H protective circuits and H05K printed-circuit assemblies each appear only once or twice. That imbalance suggests coating-line automation, connector-level automated test sequencing, and PCB assembly automation for OBC modules are comparatively under-claimed within this intersection. Any of these should be verified against full claim text before assuming they are genuinely open, since low IPC counts can also reflect low actual demand rather than pure white space.
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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.