Ford Patent Shows Plan For 800-Volt EV Architecture And Split Battery Pack

Ford is among the mainstream automakers whose EVs have a 400-volt architecture, and it has never publicly announced plans to launch 800-volt electric models. However, according to a patent filed by the Blue Oval almost four years ago, it is working on a multi-voltage system capable of operating at 800 volts, at least during charging.

The patent also mentions two separate battery arrays that would be charged by the multi-voltage charging system. To us, that sounds like a similar solution to what the GMC Hummer EV has: a split battery pack—literally two separate 400-volt packs that are connected in parallel under normal operation and are hooked together in series for charging to boost the voltage to 800 volts.

The fact that Ford calls this solution “multi-voltage” and that it defines two separate charging conditions in the patent further strengthens the idea that it won’t be a completely new pure EV 800-volt architecture but rather a way to raise the voltage to speed up DC fast charging.

Ford’s current EVs aren’t the quickest charging on the market. The Mustang Mach-E with the standard-range 70 kWh battery will only charge at up to 110 kW DC, while the extended-range model with its 91 kWh pack bumps it up to 150+ kW, the same as the F-150 Lightning. The big-battery Mach-E can go from a 20 to 80 percent state of charge in 30 minutes and add 60 miles of range in around 10 minutes, which is quite average.

One of the Mach-E’s direct rivals, the 800-volt Hyundai Ioniq 5, tops out at about 240 kW when hooked up to a powerful enough DC fast charger, and it goes from 10 to 80 percent in under 20 minutes. The 900-volt Lucid Air sedan, which has the highest voltage of any EV on sale today, is an absolute beast when it comes to charging, with a maximum rate of 300 kW, and its 20 to 80 percent charging time is around the 15-minute mark.

So since this patent is a few years old and only now made public, we can infer a couple of things. Firstly, Ford has been working on this multi-voltage solution for a while, and its introduction might be just around the corner. Another possibility is that it sounds like something it could implement in existing models without completely reengineering them or requiring a new platform, so we could see an upgraded Mach-E and Lightning with faster charging.

Mercedes is also reportedly upgrading its larger EQ electric models from 400 to 800 volts in 2025, and it could adopt a similar approach to the one in the Ford patent. With this voltage increase, the Three-Pointed Star’s EVs will be able to charge at more than 200 kW, and you can expect a similar increase from Ford's EVs.