General Motors have come up with a rather interesting innovation to maximize the efficiency of their electric vehicles. Under its ‘Ultium’ platform, the company has employed a system which will recapture the heat expelled from the powertrain, ambient humidity and even the passenger’s body heat to increase the range of its EVs. 

According to GM, the heat collected from the passenger can be used in several different ways, but its primary use will be to heat the cabin as quickly and as efficiently as possible. The American company claims its Ultium-based vehicles can heat the cabin quicker than IC-engined vehicles. 

As per GM, not only does this helps in putting less load on the electronics, but it also helps in increasing the efficiency of its EVs by a healthy 10 percent. Additionally, this can also be used to preheat the batteries for a quicker charge. 

Speaking about the technology, Doug Parks, executive vice president of GM said, “Having a ground-up EV architecture gives us the freedom to build in standard features like Ultium’s energy recovery capabilities. This helps us squeeze more efficiency, performance and overall customer benefit out of our EVs.”

The Ultium platform in itself is an interesting concept. Revealed a few years back, the electric architecture makes use of large, pouch-style cells that can be stacked on top of each other, vertically or horizontally, inside a battery pack. 

As per GM’s engineers, this allows the vehicle to get a range up to 650km, while maintaining an acceleration of 0-100kph in under 3 seconds! 

The company claims that it’s been working on this technology for a while now now and that it’ll eventually make its way to every Ultium-based EV as a standard feature, and this includes the Chevrolet Silverado EV and the Cadillac Lyriq. 

Image credits: General Motors