Are you ready to get behind the wheel of an Apple-branded electric vehicle? That particular longstanding speculation has yet to be converted into any announcement, and as we previously reported, it seems that motoring enthusiasts could be left waiting until 2025 for it to become an on-sale reality.
What we have received news of today, however, is the US Patent and Trademark Office granting the Cupertino company a patent for a deaeration device for a thermal system that could see use in an eventual Apple electric vehicle.
In its patent background, Apple notes that liquid heating and/or cooling systems entail a liquid media being circulated through a system. The liquid media travels between components and then returns to a starting point, with this arrangement typically being referred to as a thermal loop, a cooling loop, or a heating loop.
Traditional high flow liquid cooling systems use a constant bleed – in other words, some of the fluid flow that would otherwise be used to cool functional devices is constantly being lost back to the reservoir. The patent that Apple has just been granted, however, covers a thermal system with a deaeration device that operates at high flow rates with much-improved efficiency compared to constant bleed systems.
Coming just a month after the news that Apple had won a patent for a car sunroof with variable opacity glass, this development is giving fans of the idea of an ‘Apple Car’ all the more reason to get excited. It may be a while yet before it all comes together into an automobile that the average person can purchase and drive, but it promises to be worth the wait.
