Abstract
<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">The recent introduction of high power Silicon Carbide (SiC) switching devices has enabled electric vehicle (EV) traction inverters to achieve >99% efficiency. The consequentially low heat loss is horrific to vehicle heating-systems designers, since ~200W of power is available, at highway speeds, to heat a liquid coolant -- an order of magnitude less than that necessary to thermally condition High Voltage (HV) battery packs, and is ~40x lower than the peak heating levels needed to warm a passenger cabin.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">Rather than resort to convention by adding expensive and unreliable immersion heaters, including their inherently leak-prone plumbing and high power electronics; or adding exotic heat pumps to scavenge heat, this paper discusses the benefits and implementation of a traction inverter, that eliminates resistive heaters altogether, through novel modalities of either maintaining SiC’s high efficiency or, using a logic signal, to turn on a heating mechanism inherent in switching devices’ physics to provide multi-kilowatt coolant heating intended for HV battery pack and passenger cabin heating.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">A review of traditional traction inverter architecture and a brief overview of switching device characteristics is performed at a thermal engineer’s level, along with introducing the heating physics being exploited and the low cost circuit implementation in the novel inverter.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">Simulations showing circuit performance at several kilowatts of coolant heating power, independent of vehicle speed, are presented in the context of applicability to the imminent need for extremely cost-competitive EVs that do not provision any expensive heating devices, yet necessarily incorporate this traction inverter for EV propulsion.</div></div>