The performance, lifespan, safety, and overall cost of high-voltage batteries—central elements in electric vehicles (EVs)—are fundamental to the success of the entire EV industry. These batteries, primarily used as energy storage systems, are especially critical in small commercial vehicles (SCVs), where efficient thermal management directly impacts reliability and durability. This paper presents innovative methods to improve energy efficiency, driving range, charging speed, and cost-effectiveness by combining advanced insulation techniques with thermoelectric cooling systems (TECs).
The automotive industry is growing in EV domain and mostly in commercial vehicle application. The major challenge in EV’s is maintaining battery temperature to get optimal performance and best battery warranty. The key strategy of this research is providing insulating materials to stabilize battery temperatures. The thermal insulation minimizes thermal losses and buffers against external environmental conditions, reducing the cooling and heating system’s workload. This leads to lowering the operational demand on the compressor, pump and fan ultimately optimizing energy consumption. In this work, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), with a thermal conductivity of approximately 0.026 W/m-K, is used as the insulating material.
In addition to thermal insulation, the integration of thermoelectric cooling systems provides precise temperature regulation by the thermoelectric effect to move heat away from battery cells either to TES tank or to ambient. In this setup, a thermal energy storage (TES) unit works alongside TECs as a cost effective thermal management solution for SCVs. Unlike traditional refrigeration systems, this approach replaces the refrigerant cycle with TEC modules and a PCM based TES tank. During the vehicle’s charging phase, TECs draw power externally to store cooling energy in the TES unit. Then, during operation, the stored energy maintains battery temperatures without consuming power from the high voltage battery. In colder climates, the same TEC modules can works as battery heater by reversing electric polarity.
This paper is succeeding part of advanced battery thermal management technologies for SCVs: a comprehensive approach to optimize energy use, enhance battery performance and cost reduction, technical paper which is presented in TTTMS 2025. The optimization of existing thermo-electric system is important from system sizing, costing and performance point of view. In this paper the system is optimized and made compact with better thermal performance.
In summary, combining advanced insulation and thermoelectric cooling strategies for non-air-conditioned SCV EVs results in significant benefits— including increased driving range and a 25–30% reduction in overall system costs—while still meeting stringent battery thermal management requirements.