US Patent Issued to Mazda Motor on March 4 for "Contactor failure determination apparatus for vehicle" (Japanese Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,240,438, issued on March 4, was assigned to Mazda Motor Corp. (Hiroshima, Japan).

"Contactor failure determination apparatus for vehicle" was invented by Shinya Fujioka (Aki-gun, Japan), Haruki Yamane (Aki-gun, Japan), Junya Kono (Aki-gun, Japan), Yuki Ida (Aki-gun, Japan) and Yuta Otsuka (Aki-gun, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "To provide a contactor failure determination apparatus capable of appropriately determining failure of a contactor provided in a vehicle, a voltage sensor capable of detecting rising or dropping of a voltage of a second circuit including an external charger is provided. When an external charging request is ...