Automotive Engineering - June 2022 - 2

EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Bill Visnic
Editorial Director
Bill.Visnic@sae.org
EV, give me heat!
Cabin heating and cooling, and its negative
impact on vehicle efficiency and
range, are among the challenges still to be
resolved in battery-electric vehicles (EVs).
For drivers and passengers, interior comfort
- being warm when it's cold and cool
when it's hot outside - simply is expected
of any vehicle, regardless of its tailpipeemissions
profile. Pushing the HVAC button
in an EV, though, elicits second
thoughts such as, " If I turn on the heat,
will I have enough range to get home? "
Air-conditioning use in hot ambient
temperatures typically causes a modest
loss of EV driving range.
But it's the 30-40% range
reduction in cold weather
when the cabin heater is
deployed that continues to
challenge EVs' ability to
supplant ICE-powered vehicles,
according to veteran
SAE Media contributor Paul
Weissler, an HVAC tech
expert who sits on SAE's
standards committee. That kind of hit to
an electric delivery van rated at
125-150-miles' (201- 241-km) range, for
example, would leave it with only 75-90
miles (120-144-km) of operation before
charging is needed. The problem is exacerbated
as the mercury falls.
Fleet owners would find such a seriLindsay
Brooke
Editor-in-Chief
Lindsay.Brooke@sae.org
Expect a flurry
of new HVAC
approaches to
enter production
in the next
few years.
compressors were so inefficient, with
that their use dragged down a vehicle's
fuel efficiency by as much as 20%. EV
cabin heating can and must follow a similar
path toward higher efficiency. Heat
pumps are one potential solution.
Proven in residential and commercial
buildings, heat pumps harvest waste heat
energy, transferring it from cold space
and releasing it to a warmer one. They act
like a refrigerator in reverse. A formidable
mix of HVAC systems suppliers including
Bosch, Brose, Denso, Hanon Systems,
Mahle, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic,
Sanden, Valeo, and
Zhengzhou Guchen have
made automotive heatpump
R&D a priority.
Unique among OEMs, Tesla
spun its heavily scrutinized
'octovalve' heat pump from
SpaceX technology. By my
count, more than a dozen
2022-23 EVs are equipped
with heat pumps. As SAE
Media has reported, GM is engineering
heat-pump technology into all its Ultiumplatform
EVs; https://www.sae.org/
news/2022/04/gm-heat-pump-systemboosts-ev-range-reduces-charge-times.
But
as SAE readers know, there's rarely
ous range drop to be a non-starter as
they consider when and whether to go
electric. Most passenger-vehicle owners
won't accept the tradeoffs in cabin comfort
that accompany doing away with
the " heat engine. " The 14.8-gal. (56-L)
gas tank in the new hybrid pickup sitting
in my driveway holds the equivalent of
500 kWh of energy - roughly five times
more onboard energy than can be
stored by the extended-range battery in
Ford's Mustang Mach-E. In the oftenoverlooked
cabin-heat/range metric, the
most humble hybrids put even the most
expensive EVs on the proverbial trailer.
As happened over the course of automotive
air-conditioner development, EV
cabin heating technology will improve
dramatically and steadily. Early A/C
2 June 2022
a free lunch in any design engineering or
product-development solution. Heat
pump performance is limited by slower
refrigerant flow rates in low temperatures,
sometmes forcing the switch to less-efficient
resistance or PTC (positive temperature
coefficient) heaters. Alternatives are
being investigated. As our feature by Mr.
Weissler on page 19 details, Toyota and its
HVAC partner Denso have developed a
system incorporating liquid-gas separator
technology that enables heat pump operation
down to -10°C (14°F). It's now in
production on the 2023 Toyota BZ4X.
I expect a flurry of new HVAC approaches
to enter production in the
next few years, as engineering innovation
and customer demand force solutions
to one of vehicle electrification's
greatest compromises.
Lindsay Brooke, Editor-in-Chief
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https://www.sae.org/news/2022/04/gm-heat-pump-system-boosts-ev-range-reduces-charge-times
Automotive Engineering - June 2022

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