Patent 11031640 was granted and assigned to Toyota on June, 2021 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An assembled battery is constituted of a plurality of battery blocks connected in series, each battery block including a plurality of cells. SBMs are provided corresponding to the battery blocks, respectively. Each of the SBMs is configured to monitor at least one of a voltage of each cell included in a corresponding battery block, and a voltage of the corresponding battery block. A total voltage monitoring circuit is configured to monitor the total voltage of the assembled battery, separately from the SBMs.