The frontal area of internal combustion engine powered vehicles is opened with the meshed grill to induct incoming air into the engine room for engine cooling. To the contrary the frontal panel of electric vehicles is closed by design and made up of single panel. But the closed frontal panel of electric vehicle would have serious effect on the increment of aerodynamic resistance of the vehicle.
In this numerical study, the open and closed frontal panel of electric vehicle has been studied to see its effect on the aerodynamic resistance of the model vehicle. As aerodynamic drag has significant impact on the power consumption of electric vehicles especially at high speed, finding all possible ways to reduce aerodynamic drag has paramount importance to the development process of the vehicle.
From the study, it was found that the drag factor (CD*A) of the model vehicle with open panel grill is reduced about 4.7% than the closed grill vehicles. It means that the total drag of the vehicle with the open panel grill is reduced and it should have seriously effect on the energy savings of the model electric vehicle or to extend the driving range with the same size of battery.