Patent 7759817 was granted and assigned to Toyota on July, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A power supply system for driving a vehicle includes a battery, a boost converter boosting the voltage of the battery, a capacitor to which the voltage boosted by the boost converter is applied across the electrodes, system main relays provided between the capacitor and the output of the boost converter for connection and disconnection between the capacitor and the boost converter, and a control device controlling the boost converter and the system main relays. The control device, after giving an instruction for disconnection to the system main relays, causes the boost converter to change the voltage of the output to determine whether the system main relays are normally disconnected.