Performance evaluation of a vapor injection heat pump system for electric vehicles

•EV heat pump characteristics are investigated in various ambient conditions.•COP in EV heat pump is studied considering vehicle operational condition.•Vapor injection is proposed as an alternative EV heat pump in cold conditions.•Vapor injection improves air temperature as well as heating capacity. Battery-powered electric vehicles (EV) need an efficient electric heating system for extending the driving mileage. An air-source heat pump system offers an economical alternative for EV because it consumes less energy than a heating system using Joule heat and it can use the same components as an air conditioning system for cooling. However, its performance degradation is inevitable at very low ambient temperatures. Although vapor refrigerant injection is known as a good technology to overcome this problem in residential heat pump systems, the number of vapor injection heat pump studies for EV applications is quite limited. In this paper, considering the characteristics of EV application, the configuration of a vapor injection heat pump system for EV is introduced, and it was modeled, using a scroll compressor geometry-based thermodynamic analysis. The performance was estimated for cold ambient regions under the EV operational conditions.