On the EV1 were many industry firsts and many widely used today in both ICE and EV vehicles. Among the most significant were: power electronics design, packaging, and cooling directly related to today’s EVs; electrohydraulic power steering (EHPS), which soon led to electric power steering; heat pump HVAC (the “grandfather” of today’s systems); low-rolling-resistance tires; inductive charging (now widely used for phones, electric toothbrushes, and other things); an electric-defrost windshield (virtually invisible embedded wiring to defog the glass); keyless ignition (the EV1 used a console keypad); electric brakes and parking brake; by-wire acceleration, braking, and gear selection; cabin temperature preconditioning; tire-pressure sensing; regenerative braking (including variable coast regen—which was on our early development cars but just two set levels selected by a shift lever button on production EV1 cars, due to legal issues with brake-light activation), and regen/friction brake blending; IGBT (replacing MOSFET) power inverter technology, and low-friction bearings, seals, and lubricants.
Source: GM’s EV1 Invented Many Technologies that are on Today’s EVs
Barely related: Microsoft has a ton of patents on cellular phone technology and smart phones. They just didn’t deliver products using those technologies. I understand, at least a few years ago, Microsoft made more on the sale of an Android phone than did Google – as Microsoft licensed its intellectual property to smart phone manufacturers. I believe that then came to about $2 billion per year!
