Hierarchical Climate Control Strategy for Electric Vehicles with Door-Opening Consideration

This study proposes a novel climate control strategy for electric vehicles (EVs) by addressing door-opening interruptions, an overlooked aspect in EV thermal management. We create and validate an EV simulation model that incorporates door-opening scenarios. Three controllers are compared using the simulation model: (i) a hierarchical non-linear model predictive control (NMPC) with a unique coolant dividing layer and a component for cabin air inflow regulation based on door-opening signals; (ii) a single MPC controller; and (iii) a rule-based controller. The hierarchical controller outperforms, reducing door-opening temperature drops by 46.96% and 51.33% compared to single layer MPC and rule-based methods in the relevant section. Additionally, our strategy minimizes the maximum temperature gaps between the sections during recovery by 86.4% and 78.7%, surpassing single layer MPC and rule-based approaches, respectively. We believe that this result opens up future possibilities for incorporating the thermal comfort of passengers across all sections within the vehicle.