A Detailed Review on Thermal Management System of Electric Vehicles

The total thermal management system development of electric vehicles requires identification of all inter-dependent thermal sub systems and optimized control strategy formulation. Each of the subsystems requires a favorable working environment for sustained reliability, performance and vehicle’s battery power savings. Controller Area Network (CAN) bus technology is established communication protocol for the unmatched merits it offers over wiring based systems. It coordinates all thermal devices, sensors and systems and will be more detrimental to the success of electric vehicles (EVs) in future. The functional requirements imposed by the vehicles’ batteries & charging systems, air conditioning systems, heating systems and electric powertrain raise new challenges particularly with regard to the power optimization and control. The aim of present work is to investigate the complexity of networking of various thermal sub-systems of an electric vehicle and emphasize the importance of advanced communication protocols to effectively coordinate such systems. The accuracy, dependability, diagnostics and manageability of CAN based communication in managing complete thermal system of electric vehicles seems promising and reliable.