[boznz]

Basically it wont have the guts to cool down a car cabin, The inside of a fridge is small and well insulated whereas the sun coming through a car window provides some serious heating (KW) into a much larger area.

I Guess that's not the answer you want to hear.

 

[CarvenMarven]

I figured there must be a reason it’s not done...
It’s just I was thinking if the fridge can make a small area -18 then it wasn’t unreasonable to think it could make a large area 20 degrees.
I didn’t factor in the closed system.
I’m glad I asked and found out before I put the time money and effort into building it to find it didn’t work, so thanks for your input

 

[mickqld]

As already said, the 12volt fridge compressor is way too small to do a car cabin. It could be used to make a cooler box. There are 12volt and 24volts air conditioning compressors easily available that will do the job you want. They are a little bit expensive but they solve your problem and are designed to do the job properly. Generally for a sedan the 12volt compressor will pull about 60 amps while running. So you need a fairly generous battery system for it to work for more than a few hours. I have read that compared to a belt driven compressor they are more energy efficient, if that makes you feel better. This idea is what I am considering.
cheers, Mick

 

[brian_]

If your EV will have a sufficiently high battery voltage, it would make more sense to use an electrically-driven air conditioner from a production EV or hybrid, rather than one which is driven by 12 volts. For instance, a 2004 or later Prius has an air conditioner which is driven by the HV battery, which is not much more than 200 volts in those cars.