Measuring the airtightness and heat loss of vehicles under controlled conditions

<p dir="ltr">With electric vehicles (EV), and EV to Home technology becoming increasingly prominent, the efficiency of EV’s is an important factor in a home’s energy usage. As EV’s function as an extension of homes, pre-conditioning an EV from the homes mains supply is common practise year-round. Therefore, the thermal fabric of the vehicle is important to characterise, as the better performing this is, the less energy it will require to be conditioned to a comfortable environment. Further, the fabric performance is more important in EV’s than traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars as this is closer linked to the range the vehicle has, due to the EV solely relying on a battery for all functions. The air tightness and heat transfer coefficient of any kind of vehicle has not been widely studied within the industry, so through air tightness tests and a new methodology generated for this purpose, under controlled conditions in the University of Salford’s Energy House 2.0 test facility, the stationary thermal performance of various EV’s can be measured. The new method developed in this research is a modified version of a buildings aggregate heat loss test, incorporating air tightness and U-value measurements. The results from an array of both EV (n=5) and ICE (n=2) vehicles are presented within this paper.</p>