The battery cooling/heating with active methods is required for EVs (electric vehicles) in the extreme temperature conditions. This work presents a new active battery cooling/heating method based on PCS (phase change slurry) cycle. Two typical often used active cooling/heating methods so-called the direct cabin air blow and refrigerant circulation are also illustrated in detail. The thermodynamic assessment is conducted on these battery active cooling/heating methods with both of 1st Law and 2nd Law analysis. The variations of extra thermal load to the vehicle air-conditioning system are investigated as changes of ambient temperature, humidity and thermal load for the direct cabin air blow method. The simulation results show that the direct cabin air blow method causes more extra thermal load to the air-conditioning system without considering the cabin ventilation effect. The PCS cycle method performs higher exergy efficiency than that of using refrigerant circulation method. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.