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A frequent situation in the national automobile industry is the each time bigger rapidity that just-launched models are evolved (the so called face-lifts). Within this highly dynamic context, the solutions and technical proposals developed by the local product engineering have two main guidelines. The first one is to work on product evolutions which goal is to make the vehicles far more attractive and differentiated with respect to the competition and also to the previous model. The second one is to constantly search the standardization or the modularization of parts between the different models and versions of vehicles, thus reducing the costs of investments and providing scale profits.

This paper intends to study the feasibility about to use photovoltaic components in a car for energizing the compressor of an automotive air conditioning system. For this, we compared the performance of two different photovoltaic components used for this purpose: photovoltaic modules applied in a rigid substrates and thin film, applied in a flexible substrates. The study motivation are, while the photovoltaic air-conditioning is operating, to fuel saving, to increase the vehicle performance, to improve the greenhouse levels of gas emissions and to propose a new option of product, which is not available in the Brazilian market at this moment. The evaluations showed that the most viable proposal is to use thin film instead of photovoltaic modules.