A Novel Concept of Air-Conditioner-Integrated Electric Vehicle for the Future Smart Community

In order to expand the natural energy and the energy conservation, a smart photovoltaic power generation (PV) and electric vehicle (EV) combined system has been proposed and the effect has been clarified in a smart community. In the smart PV & EV combined system, it is necessary to spread the use of electric vehicles. Therefore, the air-conditioner-integrated electric vehicle (AI-EV) has been proposed. In this paper, the AI-EV is designed based on the required vehicle air-conditioning load, which depends on heat transfer between the vehicle cabin and outside air. The value of the AI-EV is compared with a gasoline vehicle, a hybrid vehicle (HV), and an EV using the developed mathematical vehicle model, which calculates a vehicle's energy consumption, and the hexagon model, which evaluates the energy consumption of an area. As a result, it is clarified that the minimum displacement of the small engine is 120 cc for the AI-EV. In the smart PV & EV combined system, AI-EV can reduce CO2 emissions by 20%, which is almost the same as for the EV in comparison with the conventional gasoline vehicle. Additionally, the AI-EV is able to gain a cruising range of more than twice as long as the EV.