DETROIT — General Motors has launched a feature within its Ultium battery platform that repurposes energy to enable longer range, faster charging speed and sportier driving.
The Ultium energy recovery feature is standard on all electric vehicles powered by the automaker’s proprietary Ultium battery platform, GM said in a statement Monday. It has already helped enable the GMC Hummer pickup’s Watts to Freedom mode, which accelerates the pickup from 0 to 60 mph in three seconds by pre-cooling the propulsion system.
“Having a ground-up EV architecture gives us the freedom to build in standard features like Ultium’s energy recovery capabilities,” Doug Parks, GM executive vice president of global product development, purchasing and supply chain, said in the statement. “This helps us squeeze more efficiency, performance and overall customer benefit out of our EVs.”
The system is based around an automotive-grade heat pump that repurposes wasted energy, which is more sophisticated than a heat pump in modern homes, said Lawrence Ziehr, project manager of Ultium energy recovery capabilities.