Ford Patents Rooftop Battery Extender (LMAO)

[ShadowsPapa]

Why spend the money to patent a really stupid idea? Who is going to run with this? Nobody.

You say that now, but with the new battery technology coming out, the batteries will be a fraction of what they are now. It doesn't say what the batteries contain, just that they are batteries.
It's predicted that in about 3 to 5 years vehicle batteries will be 1/3 the weight they are now.

Frankly, If you are traveling on the highway, this idea isn't any worse than 700 pounds of luggage you see on the roofs of vehicles on the interstate every day.

It's a patent, not a prototype going into production next model year.

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[ShadowsPapa]

Well now that some of us are taking this seriously, I'll point out that it's a ridiculous patent and it should have never been awarded to begin with. Where you put the battery on the vehicle is quite arbitrary and whatever protection that Ford thinks they just scored would likely be laughed out of court.

Mercedes and others have batteries in the C pillars at the rear of SUVs in some of the ideas I've seen them working on. The batteries are shaped to fit into the infrastructure.
Look for Tesla and others to do that as well.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

It's a very smart patent with the ultra light battery development going on for electric aircraft. Do you really think batteries will be heavy forever? Just look at the changes in the last 20 years...

My point exactly. I've been keeping up on battery tech, and it's not that far off in the future. I've watched the electric aircraft recent flight with interest as well. In some of these advances, we're talking very soon, 5 years or so. Best to be ready.

 

[Cburd61]

Boy, I hope technology makes batteries lighter. I just replaced both of mine in the Gladiator, and the main AGM battery weighs 47 pounds. I thought I’d be nursing a hernia by the time I got it swapped out into the engine bay.

 

[SPED1]

you all missed the point of the patent. Now cutting and making the gladiators hardtop modular and storable as the tonneau cover and in the bed is unable to be sold by any company. That is how I take this.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Absolutely, people are missing the point of a patent. I worked at CCC and my office was very close to the people responsible for patents. One of the engineers there had over 100 patents for the company - the company in total had many hundreds if not thousands. The fellow who wrote up the patent applications was busy all the time. Why so many? Competitive edge. Protect their ideas even if never used. They had patents for things that likely would never see the light of day - but no one else could use those ideas or any of that engineering in competitive products. They competed with the likes of world-power Siemens, among others.
Now no one can come up with a auxiliary battery system like this.
In a way I see this as an indicator of what's to come - Obviously Ford sees EV batteries getting a whole lot smaller and a lot lighter in the very near future otherwise there'd be no need for such a patent if they had the belief that batteries will remain too heavy for more than the next couple of years or so.
Ford people have some information telling them that battery technology is about to change big-time and they are getting ahead of that game with this.

 

[BearFootSam]

Why do you assume it is a heavy battery? People already shove hundreds of pounds up there in tents and racks and crap, a 200 lb removable battery would not be too far fetched and depending on battery tech could provide a lot of range.

The 4xe carries a 17kw battery, best case an equivalent battery weighs 65kg less casing, mounts, wiring. More likely you are looking at 115-150kg for a battery that isn't going to get you very far. But if your goal is overlanding or pretending to, the battery can't replace all of that gear, it has to go somewhere other than the roof.

 

[bleda2002]

The 4xe carries a 17kw battery, best case an equivalent battery weighs 65kg less casing, mounts, wiring. More likely you are looking at 115-150kg for a battery that isn't going to get you very far. But if your goal is overlanding or pretending to, the battery can't replace all of that gear, it has to go somewhere other than the roof.

Why can't the other stuff go on the roof and bed as well? Battery doesn't have to be super thick, a few inches at most depending on actual roof size and the aftermarket can work around it. The patent even would cover if Ford wants to turn the battery into a platform itself like the pioneer platform. Also covered would be putting an aux battery directly in to the roof panels so that the battery is potentially the roof. The cg argument is valid, but also can be off set depending on how low and heavy the main battery is.

 

[JarHeadLV]

Available for hard top only and now negates the ability to remove said hard top.

Thats a HUGE FAIL!!!!

 

[ShadowsPapa]

All the talk is about today's batteries. This is a fresh patent - that means it's for tomorrow's batteries. They are talking of a lot more distance from lighter batteries just in the coming years - like 3 to 5 years. So what might weigh 700 pounds today would be under 400 tomorrow. Tell me some of what you see on top of Jeeps and Broncos right now is only 100 pounds.
Everyone is still acting like these are being made, and the batteries when these could eventually be made will weigh what they did last year.

Since the roof will never be off our JLU, I'd be interested in some more capacity - even another 10 miles would be a huge help.

 

[SteveInOrlando]

This is not a novel idea! There is no way this should be approved! Rooftop mounted batteries and charging systems have existed for EV for well over a decade! This is the stupidest patent application I have ever seen. There is nothing here that is unique to Ford or even new to the industry!

 

[ShadowsPapa]

This is not a novel idea! There is no way this should be approved! Rooftop mounted batteries and charging systems have existed for EV for well over a decade! This is the stupidest patent application I have ever seen. There is nothing here that is unique to Ford or even new to the industry!

It's not the idea - mouse traps had been around for years and still patents kept coming out for mouse traps. There will be specifics covered by the patent. They aren't patenting batteries on a roof, they are patenting how they would do it, and likely more specific for THEIR vehicle so no 3rd party can make such a thing for the Bronco or whatever.
This won't prevent companies from making roof-top battery packs. Not how patents work.
The key is in the details. And when you apply for a patent, detail is everything - when I was involved, even the font had to match from your application to what the patent office received. You had to have the same sentences on the same lines, the drawings had to be in the same order and orientation and more.
The guy that did the final patent submissions that went to our patent attorney had to run the same document processing software the attorney used and what we had printed in our office in Des Moines had to match to the letter and period what the attorney submitted.

 

[JRobes]

About the only thing I "like" about the concept is theoretically if you needed to charge both the roof pack and vehicle pack you could plug them both in at the same time and double the charge rate that a single pack would be capable of. There's certain phone manufacturers that do the same with the phones internal batteries (multiple cells) so they can charge the pair of cells faster than a single cell.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

About the only thing I "like" about the concept is theoretically if you needed to charge both the roof pack and vehicle pack you could plug them both in at the same time and double the charge rate that a single pack would be capable of. There's certain phone manufacturers that do the same with the phones internal batteries (multiple cells) so they can charge the pair of cells faster than a single cell.

Parallel charging like any other battery. The two together have more capacity so you up the rate.

 

[JRobes]

Parallel charging like any other battery. The two together have more capacity so you up the rate.

right, but the benefit here is someone could utilize 2 separate charge stations (1 per pack). As many are aware, it's not only your device that has power/charge limitations, but also our current lacking electrical infrastructure. As far as I'm aware (which honestly I'm not very), most charge stations can only handle a single vehicle at a time, but by utilizing two separate charge stations you can eliminate that infrastructure limitation. Downside here is needing 2 charge stations which sometimes finding one available is an issue, and then blocking access from others using them.

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