General Motors today laid out the efficiency gains it says that the Ultium electric vehicle platform makes use of. The system utilizes heat pumps to recapture waste heat from the powertrain, ambient humidity, and even the occupants themselves to make their vehicles go farther on a charge.

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

In an effort to make their propulsion system as efficient as possible, the Ultium platform, which underpins the GMC Hummer EV, can recover the heat generated by the power electronics and other propulsion components to make the vehicle go farther. It can even capture and reuse humidity from both inside and outside the vehicle, as well as body heat from passengers to this end.

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The latter is used more to make the cabin heating system more efficient than it is in traditional vehicles but does reduce the load on the electronics in the vehicle. That, the automaker claims, allows it to go as much as 10 percent farther per charge. It can also allow the vehicle to charge faster by preconditioning the battery.

It is these features that have allowed the Hummer EV to have its Watts to Freedom feature. This is possible because the energy recovery system helps precool the propulsion system and allows the massive vehicle to hit 60 mph in just three seconds.

The functions are covered by 11 patents and four publications that actually trace their history to the earliest days of modern EVs, with the EV1 of the late 1990s, when the company developed its first EV heat pump. These efficiency systems are available on all current Ultium vehicles and will be available on all future vehicles based on the platform, like the Chevrolet Silverado EV and the Cadillac Lyriq.