Theyve been hailed as amoney saver, anessential featurefor EVs, and in some cases:a game changer.
What am I talking about?
Heat pumps of course!
The name sounds simple enough, but what exactly do they do?
And why are they important for electric vehicles?
Lets dive in and answer some of those questions.
What is it?
Put simply, a heat pump is a rig used to move heat around an electric vehicle.
Similar concepts are used in combustion engine cars, but we dont care about those right now.
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Lets go deeper
But why do we need to move heat around?
Well, to be honest, we dont.
We could simply cool the battery and motors, and dump that heat back into the atmosphere using radiators.
But thats kind of wasteful, and thats not at all in the spirit of electric vehicles.
Less use of the main battery means improved range and improved efficiency.
See how this is working?
This is all fine when temperatures outside the vehicle are just cool, but what about when its muchmuchcolder?
[Read:How much does it cost to buy, own, and run an EV?
Its not as much as you think]
What about when its freezing?
Ascoldclimate EV drivers know, an ice-cold battery is very inefficient and can have a detrimental impact on range.
Heres where reversible heat pumps come in.
As mentioned, reversible heat pumps can also generate heat.
They do this by compressing the refrigerant that flows through the cooling system under compression, refrigerants get hot.
Whats the fuss?
Hopefully that all makes sense.Heaters can create perfect operating temperatures for the battery in freezing situations.
And in non-freezing, but cold, situations they can heat up the cabin and save battery power.
This can have a dramatic impact on range when driving in cold weather.
Its not just Tesla thats using heat pumps, though.
It goes without saying, anything that improves the range and efficiency of an EV is a good thing.
Heat pumps get a thumbs up from us.
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Story byMatthew Beedham
Matthew is the editor of SHIFT.
He likes electric cars, and other things with wheels, wings, or hulls.
