Zhe Wang

Range anxiety remains a critical barrier to electric vehicle (EV) adoption, driven in part by the substantial energy burden of thermal management systems (TMS), which can reduce driving range by over 40% under extreme weather conditions. Solar heat transmitted through vehicle glazing constitutes a primary driver of cabin thermal load, and intense solar radiation will cause severe thermal discomfort, yet glazing-based mitigation strategies have not been systematically evaluated across global climates. Here, we present a powertrain-TMS co-simulation framework encompassing 2,768 cities and over 930,000 simulations to assess the climate-dependent performance of electrochromic (EC) glazing in EVs. Reflective EC glazing, operating via solar rejection rather than absorption, universally outperforms absorptive EC across all simulated locations, extending driving range by up to 46.6 km and reducing TMS power by up to 47.9% relative to the best static alternative in high-irradiance regions. Globally, reflective EC achieves a mean annual range gain of 16.6 km and an equivalent battery cost saving of $219.8 per vehicle, which approaches the lower bound of current EC device cost premiums in high-irradiance regions, and is expected to grow more favorable as manufacturing costs decline. A key finding is that thermal comfort improvements quantified via PMV and PPD extend substantially beyond the geographic boundary of energy efficiency gains: 802 cities with modest range returns still benefit meaningfully from EC glazing in occupant comfort. Dual Recommendation Index maps, resolved across energy efficiency and thermal comfort dimensions, provide climate-dependent deployment guidance for EC glazing in EVs worldwide.