No abstract

Automobile airconditioning systems are not very efficient even for use in conjunction with internal combustion engines. This problem is more critical if they are to be used in electric vehicles because conventional systems consume a significantly more energy and therefore tremendously shortens the travel distance per charge of an electric vehicle. Besides the development of new generation airconditioning system, one of the easier remedies is to reduce the heating effects of a cabin so that the requirement for airconditioning can be minimized and thus its energy consumption by the system. Current work aims to identify some of the key factors that may help minimize the cooling load of an electrical vehicle. This work investigates the solar radiation effect on a 5:1 reduced scale car cabin, whose dimensions were based on the actual dimension of a Formosa Martiz. In the process of radiative heating, the temperatures in the cabin were found increase at a much higher rate in the beginning. On the other hand, the installation of window film and sun screen effectively reduced the rise in cabin temperature. Hence, their installation will significantly help saving the overall car energy and therefore extend an electric car travel distance per charge. The color of the cabin external surfaces should be carefully chosen so that these surfaces can effectively reflect the radiative heat energy. Also, the cabin ceiling should be insulated as much as possible to reduce the amount of heat conduction into the cabin space.