Onboard Charger Thermal Management Patents: Leaders & Gaps 2026
- 19 families total. This is a narrow, tightly bounded filing area — not a crowded field with hundreds of overlapping claims to clear.
- Filing peaked in 2022 at 14 records and has since gone flat, suggesting the core cooling architectures were staked out in a short window rather than built up gradually.
- H02M power conversion carries 15 of 19 records, meaning almost every filing treats thermal management as a power-electronics problem first, mechanical cooling second.
What this patent set covers
Onboard charger (OBC) thermal management sits at the intersection of power electronics and vehicle cooling: keeping AC/DC and DC/DC conversion stages within their thermal limits during charging, without adding weight or cost to the vehicle. The search string pulls records that combine an onboard or on-board charger with an explicit thermal management, power module cooling, or heat dissipation claim — which is why the set is small. Only 19 patent families match this combination across the 2015-2026 window, concentrated overwhelmingly in the H02M power conversion subclass.
Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any trend line will look thinner than actual filing activity — a 2026 count of zero says more about the reporting lag than about a stop in R&D.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 19 families: how filing activity has moved year over year, and where those filings sit across the IPC classification system.
A short, front-loaded filing curve
Filings were absent in 2017, rose to a peak of 14 in 2022, and have not sustained that level since. A midpoint reading at the peak year points to a filing wave rather than a steadily building trend — consistent with a small number of assignees staking claims in a compressed period rather than a technology under continuous, broadening investment.
Power conversion dominates the classification mix
H02M (power conversion) accounts for 15 of 19 records, dwarfing B60L electric vehicle propulsion (4), H05K printed circuits and assemblies (3), and single-digit counts in H01M batteries, H03B oscillation generation and H10W. The skew confirms that applicants are filing thermal management claims as extensions of power conversion patents, not as standalone cooling-hardware patents.
Shares are the percentage of the 19 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Onboard Charger Vehicle Thermal Management with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about onboard charger vehicle thermal management and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this set
Peristaltic pump for on-board charger thermal management (US20200413574A1)
A vehicle on-board charging assembly includes at least one power electronics module and a coolant channel in thermal contact with it. A first and second reactive portion along the coolant channel wall, activated by a set of emitters, allow a controller to sequentially trigger peristaltic pumping of coolant through the channel — moving coolant without a conventional mechanical pump.Filed by Ford Global Technologies, published 2020-12-31; the most-cited record in this set.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200413574A1 | Peristaltic pump for on-board charger thermal management | 5 |
| 2 | US20230179108A1 | Three-level rectification DC/DC converter | 4 |
| 3 | US11058037B2 | Peristaltic pump for on-board charger thermal management | 2 |
| 4 | US20230179105A1 | Three-level rectification DC/DC converter | 1 |
| 5 | CN110290673A | 一种油冷式车载充电机热管理系统 | 1 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older records; they are not a measure of current commercial importance.
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. Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (5 of 5 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Reading the trend, the classification mix and the citation table together points to a technology area that consolidated fast and has not moved much since.
A single peak, not a build-up
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 14 in 2022 and have since flattened. That shape usually means a handful of applicants moved to secure claim space around one architecture generation rather than a technology attracting steadily broadening investment.
Thermal claims ride on power-conversion filings
Nearly every record in this set classifies primarily under H02M power conversion rather than a dedicated cooling or thermal-hardware class. Thermal management here is being claimed as a feature of the converter or rectifier design, not as an independent mechanical system.
Peristaltic cooling draws the most follow-on attention
The Ford peristaltic-pump filing and its related continuation lead the citation table, ahead of three-level rectification DC/DC converter filings. That gap suggests active-cooling-channel design is the sub-area other applicants are building on or designing around most.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to onboard charger vehicle thermal management, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignees and where they sit
The assignee set is small and recent-year momentum has cooled across the board — every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest reported year, consistent with the post-2022 flattening in the overall trend.
Ford Global Technologies
Holds the most-cited record in the set, covering sequential activation of reactive coolant-channel portions for peristaltic pumping — an active-cooling approach that avoids a conventional mechanical pump.
Power-conversion specialists
The three-level rectification DC/DC converter filings sit just behind the Ford record in citation count, indicating converter-topology-linked thermal claims as the second cluster of active claim-building.
Chinese and Korean assignees present but quiet
Assignees including Delta Electronics, Hyundai and Beijing Hangsheng New Energy Technology appear in the record set but show no filings in the most recent tracked year, matching the broader post-peak cooldown.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Delta Electronics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Ford Global Technologies, LLC | 0 | — |
| Hyundai Motor Company | 0 | — |
| Beijing Hangsheng New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a narrow, power-electronics-led field with a cooled-off filing rate — useful context before committing engineering or legal resources.
Check freedom-to-operate on active cooling channels
The Ford peristaltic-pump family is the most-cited record here; any coolant-channel design using sequential or reactive actuation should be checked against it before development proceeds.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaMap the converter-topology thermal claims
Three-level rectification DC/DC converter filings form the second citation cluster — worth tracing their claim scope if your design touches multi-level power-stage cooling.
Explore citation chains in EurekaWatch for renewed filing after the 2022 peak
With every tracked assignee at zero in the latest year and publication lag understating recent activity, a fresh pull in 6-12 months will show whether filing resumes or stays flat.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This dataset identifies 19 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine an onboard or on-board charger with an explicit thermal management, power module cooling, or heat dissipation claim. That is a small, tightly bounded set compared to broader EV power electronics categories. Because the search string requires both elements together, related filings that treat cooling only generically or chargers only functionally are excluded, so the true population of relevant prior art may be somewhat larger once adjacent classifications are checked manually.
Ford Global Technologies holds the most-cited record in the set, covering a peristaltic coolant-pumping design for the charger's power electronics module. Other assignees present include Delta Electronics, Hyundai, and Beijing Hangsheng New Energy Technology, though all of these show zero filings in the most recent tracked year. The field does not show one runaway leader with a large filing volume; it is a small group of assignees each holding a handful of families.
The filing trend rises from zero in 2017 to a peak of 14 records in 2022, then flattens, which typically indicates a wave of claim-securing around a particular generation of converter and cooling architecture rather than continuous rising investment. Publication lag of roughly 18 months means the 2025 and 2026 figures understate real filing activity, so the apparent drop-off should not be read as a definitive end to R&D in this area. A fresh data pull in a year or two would clarify whether filing has genuinely cooled or is simply pending publication.
Power conversion (H02M) dominates, accounting for 15 of the 19 records, meaning most applicants file thermal management claims as part of a converter or rectifier patent rather than as a standalone cooling-hardware patent. Electric vehicle propulsion (B60L) and printed circuit assemblies (H05K) form smaller secondary clusters, with battery, oscillation and other classes represented by single records. This composition suggests that anyone entering this space should expect to clear power-electronics claim language, not just mechanical cooling patents.
Relative to the heavy concentration in H02M power conversion, several adjacent branches look thin: oil-cooled OBC housings, valveless or peristaltic coolant actuation beyond the Ford family, battery-integrated cooling loops that share a coolant circuit between charger and battery, and printed-circuit-embedded heat spreaders. These are inferred from low record counts in the corresponding IPC subclasses rather than a systematic freedom-to-operate search, so they should be treated as starting points for further diligence rather than confirmed open 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.