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In order to develop various parts and components of vehicles, understanding the effects of their structures and thermal performance on the fuel consumption and cruising distance is important. However, because of the limited information available to parts suppliers, it is not always easy to predict and study vehicle fuel efficiency and cruising range performance under arbitrary driving conditions. In this study, the authors have developed an RFD (Regression Fuel-consumption Diagram) method to predict the cruising performance of internal-combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) based only on the published information given to suppliers by using standard reference vehicles, which had been regressed and identified for control characteristics and fuel consumption diagrams. As an example of the application of the RFD method to realistic situation, the effects of the driving mode and air-conditioning on the fuel consumption of ICEV are studied.

During air heating in winter, the air-conditioning system of an electric vehicle draws much energy from the battery, which significantly shortens the vehicle's cruising distance as compared to an air cooling in summer. In this study, which considers the air-heating mode, a zone control (ZC) air-conditioning system is developed with the goal of achieving energy savings. The ZC system, which focuses particularly on the area around the driver, is able to reduce the supplied airflow rate. While this rate is one of the most important parameters in the analysis in this study, it represents a trade-off with the thermal comfort of passengers. Thus, the standard new effective temperature (SET*) is also evaluated, using numerical manikins, to compare the developed system with a conventional system. In addition, the age of air is investigated in order to quantitatively evaluate the air distribution efficiency of the ZC system.

Accuracy of numerical simulation has to be evaluated through the actual phenomenon such as experiment or measurement and then it can be employed to design the air-conditioning system of car cabin at the development phase. Scaled model of vehicle cabin was created by the Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan (JSAE) and the experiment was performed to obtain the detailed information of heat transfer characteristics inside the cabin under the non-isothermal condition. The sheet heaters were put to the inner surface of the acrylic cabin and they supplied certain amount of heat. The temperatures of inner and outer surface and air were measured to evaluate the thermal environment of the cabin. The results lead to enhancement of the data of the standard model of the cabin.

Following the previous reports, ventilation characteristics in automobile was investigated by using a half-scale car model which was created by the Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan (JSAE). In the present study, the ventilation mode of the cabin was foot mode which was the ventilation method for using in winter season. Supplied air was blown from the supply openings under the dashboard to the rear of the model via the driver's foot region in this mode. The experiment was performed in order to obtain accurate data about the airflow properties equipped with particle image velocimetry (PIV). Our experimental data is to be shared as a standard model to assess the environment within automobiles. The data is also for use in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) benchmark tests in the development of automobile air conditioning, which enables high accuracy prediction of the interior environment of automobiles.