Air conditioning apparatus for vehicle

Claim 1

An air conditioning apparatus for a vehicle, including an air flow duct communicating with a vehicle cabin, an outside/recirculated air selector door means adapted to introduce outside air and recirculated air into the duct, and a cooler for cooling air in the duct, characterized by comprising: set means for setting a command inside temperature for the vehicle cabin; inside temperature sensor means for sensing an actual temperature inside the vehicle cabin; outside temperature sensor means for sensing a temperature outside the vehicle cabin; and operation control means for controlling the air selector door means in response to outputs of the inside and outside temperature sensor means, the operation control means being constructed to, in a maximum cooling mode, introduce only outside air into the duct when an actual inside temperature is higher than an outside temperature, reduce the amount of outside air supply down to zero when the actual inside temperature drops to a level substantially equal to the outside temperature, cool off recirculated air introduced into the duct in place of outside air by activating the cooler, increase the amount of outside air from zero when the actual inside temperature drops further to a level higher than a command inside temperature by a predetermined degree until the amount of outside air reaches a predetermined upper limit, and cause the amount of outside air to settle at the upper limit when the actual inside temperature coincides with the command inside temperature.