One of the toughest engineering problems faced with hybrid vehicles is air conditioning design. Because the compressor involved in refrigerant cooling requires so much energy to work, it relies on gas rather than a vehicle’s battery. And because of this, every time the vehicle stops, like at a traffic light, and switches off the gas engine, the air conditioning also shuts down. For people in warmer climates this is unacceptable and often they switch off the hybrid’s economy mode, driving on pure gas. That kind of defeats the purpose of buying a hybrid in the first place. Tom Anderson, of UK-based automotive engineering firm Ricardo, thinks he has developed a solution to the problem.
From New Scientist:
Ricardo’s system uses GPS to plot the car’s position on a digital map that includes the location of traffic lights and junctions to anticipate when the engine, and the aircon, is likely to switch itself off. It then produces extra cool air to reduce the cabin temperature by a further 1.5 °C – not enough to make the passengers shiver, but enough to tide the vehicle over while it is stationary.
Using the system slashed fuel consumption during typical urban driving by up to 9 per cent in climate-controlled tests carried out by Ricardo engineers working with the Transport Research Laboratory in Wokingham, UK, and the car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover.
The catch is that the system works best at 22 degrees Celsius–right at the bottom end of the temperature scale most of us use to judge whether or not to turn the air conditioning on. Not a perfect location-based solution at all, but it’s a start.