Patent ID: 7013966

Claim:
An air conditioner for a vehicle, comprising: an air conditioning case in which air flows toward a passenger compartment of the vehicle; a refrigerant cycle including a compressor for compressing and discharging refrigerant, and an interior heat exchanger for cooling air by absorbing heat from air in a cooling mode, the interior heat exchanger being disposed in the air conditioning case to heat air in a heating mode where the refrigerant discharged from the compressor is introduced directly into the interior heat exchanger, the refrigerant cycle being provided to switch one of the cooling mode and the heating mode; a control unit for controlling operation of the refrigerant cycle; a cooling mode switch for outputting an operational command of the cooling mode to the control unit, and a heating mode switch for outputting an operational command of the heating mode to the control unit, the heating mode switch being operated independent from the cooling mode switch, wherein: the control unit selects the cooling mode when the operational command from the cooling mode switch is input to the control unit, and selects the heating mode when the operational command from the heating mode switch is input to the control unit; when the operational commands from both of the cooling mode switch and the heating mode switch are input to the control unit at the same time, the control unit always selects one of the cooling mode and the heating mode and no other mode as a priority mode for.