Patent ID: 7143590

Claim:
An air conditioner for a vehicle, comprising: an air conditioning unit for performing air conditioning of a passenger compartment of the vehicle, the air conditioning unit including an operation portion that being operable in the air conditioning; an environmental-condition detecting device for detecting an environmental condition of the vehicle; control characteristic memory means for storing a control characteristic showing a relationship between the environmental condition detected by the environmental-condition detecting device and a control value applied to the operation portion; a control unit for controlling operation of the operation portion based on the control characteristic stored in the control characteristic memory means, by using the environmental condition detected by the environmental-condition detecting device; and a manual setting device for manually setting the control value of the operation portion, wherein the environmental-condition detecting device includes a surface temperature detecting means for detecting at least one of an inner surface temperature of the passenger compartment and a surface temperature of a passenger as the environmental condition, in each of plural detection areas of the passenger compartment; the control unit calculates a solar radiation thermal load based on a temperature of at least an area close to a window of the vehicle, among temperatures of the plural detection areas detected by the surface temperature detecting means; the control characteristic memory means stores plural control values as control characteristics applied to the operation portion in accordance with the solar radiation thermal load; and when the manual setting device manually chances a control value of the operation portion at a time, the control unit changes a control value calculated based on the solar radiation thermal load at the time, among the plural control values stored in the control characteristic memory means.