Balancing of HVAC System Energy Consumption in Electric Vehicles

Electric Vehicles (EVs) have started gaining notable attention from the industry and customers in India over last couple of years. However, OEMs are still cautious for wider customer acceptance of EVs as their products are challenged with expensive component costs, lack of charging infrastructure, issues of driving range anxiety amongst the customers. In such a scenario, OEMs are constantly looking for innovative solutions which will enhance the driving range of EVs by optimizing the power consumption in every possible way. In an electric vehicle, Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system is essentially required for providing all season thermal comfort and maintain operating temperature of High Voltage battery pack (HV battery). While catering to such requirements, HVAC system becomes one of the major power consuming aggregate in EVs. HVAC system includes a controllable electric motor based scroll compressor and Positive temperature coefficient (PTC) type electric heater for cooling and heating requirements respectively. With such high voltage components, HVAC system tends to cut-down the available driving range from HV battery especially in extreme ambient conditions (Extreme hot and cold). This work discusses the intelligence embedded in automatically controlled HVAC system in EV’s, wherein the algorithms have been developed for optimizing power consumed by the HVAC system while ensuring passenger thermal comfort across different usage patterns and year round ambient conditions observed in India. The optimized control strategies for compressor and PTC heater have been effectively implemented through method of design of experiments. This work also gives overview on what all operating parameter are involved in optimized operation of HVAC system. When such multiple set of logics for each individual controllable component are syndicated to act simultaneously, the outcomes results in significant optimization of overall power consumed by HVAC system in EVs.