EVs with active battery cooling

I heard the i3 has it. Does it cool the battery in high ambient temps when the vehicle is parked?

Also, I am wondering what other EVs have this feature. I heard some of the battery longevity issues with the Leaf were attributed to high ambient and/or running temperatures.

My 2015 rex will turn on the ac compressor when it is plugged in on hot days, presumably to cool the batteries. Since it often gets quite hot here in Austin Texas, I set up a charger at work so that the batteries are kept cool during the day.

I wish BMW had an "operating philosophy" setting that let us choose between a few points in the trade-space of maximum range and mitigating battery degradation, like they do between range and power with comfort, eco-pro, and eco-pro+. So, in the low battery degradation mode, the battery would not get charged as high, the cooling would come on sooner on hot days, and maybe the cooling would come on if parked and if the SoC was above some level.

Srivenkat said:

I heard the i3 has it. Does it cool the battery in high ambient temps when the vehicle is parked?

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Probably because of its relatively small battery capacity, an i3 does not automatically cool its battery pack unless it is actively charging (i.e., its battery pack is not full) or an EVSE is plugged in with battery pack conditioning turned on with a departure time set for no more than ~3 hours in the future.

Srivenkat said:

Also, I am wondering what other EVs have this feature. I heard some of the battery longevity issues with the Leaf were attributed to high ambient and/or running temperatures.

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I understand that Tesla EV's actively cool their battery packs when their temperature exceeds a certain level. However, if the battery pack's charge level is so low that cooling might discharge the battery pack so much that driving would not be possible, I would think that battery pack cooling would not turn on, but I don't know this for a fact.

Many of the EVs use active cooling. I think you'll find of the bigger sellers, the VW and Nissan are the exceptions. The Chevy Volt and Bolt have active coolers.

Actually sitting in the heat isn't normally that big of an issue, but trying to charge it heats it more, and that's when there's an issue, or under heavy load while driving especially in a hot climate in stop and go driving where there's not much of an air flow, either.

An interesting aside on the newest Leaf...they slow the DC fast charging rate during a trip if you try to do it more than once! This really would seem to put a kink into trying one on a longer trip as the fast charging network expands. None of the others do this that I'm aware of unless the pack is exceptionally hot when you try to start. That normally shouldn't be an issue with active cooling, though, as it shouldn't get exceptionally hot while driving, regardless of the conditions. It would seem that Nissan didn't do a great job during the development process when it came to hot weather testing, or they just didn't want to spend the money.