Heating and air conditioning systems have significant impacts on vehicle efficiency and electric vehicle range. To fully understand these impacts, Argonne’s Advanced Mobility Technology Laboratory is equipped with an Environmental Test Cell to evaluate vehicles and components under extreme hot and cold temperature conditions (from 20°F to 95°F). This capability allows researchers to:

• Validate performance targets for battery packs, drivetrain components, control strategies and accessory loads across a range of temperatures and duty cycles;
• Quantify the impacts of air conditioning and heater/defrost operation on energy consumption and vehicle performance;
• Develop vehicle-level control solutions to mitigate temperature-related impacts; and
• Generate cold and hot operational characteristics and data to be integrated into Autonomie, Argonne’s modeling and simulation tool