Daikin has figured out how, under certain conditions, to increase the mileage of an electric vehicle on a single charge by 50%

Daikin Industries, a leading Japanese air conditioner manufacturer, has developed a refrigerant that is said to increase mileage by 50% per charge.

Compression-type air conditioners use heat absorption to cool the air inside the vehicle during the evaporation of refrigerant, previously compressed and transferred to the liquid phase in the condenser. Daikin’s new refrigerant has a boiling point of about -40 ° C, which is 10-15 ° C lower than usual. This reduces the energy required to compress it.

Daikin estimates that an air-conditioned electric vehicle that normally travels 200 km in an urban area in Japan on a single charge, with the use of a new refrigerant, will be able to travel another 100 km without recharging.

The most common modern refrigerant for air conditioning in electric vehicles, developed jointly by the American companies Honeywell and Chemours, costs about $ 270 per electric vehicle. The company has not yet named the price of the new refrigerant, confining itself to a promise to base its determination on market prices. The source notes that this increase in mileage is equivalent to an increase in battery capacity that would cost thousands of dollars, so automakers may find the new refrigerant attractive even at twice the current price.