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Thermal development of automotive applications is a lot more complex than it used to be in the past. Specifically, for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs), all the sub-systems are so intertwined that it’s hard to analyze them as sub-systems only. A system level solution is needed for proper sizing of components. For early thermal development, a co-simulation method can ensure that we take into account the inter-dependency of all the thermal features in the car. As for example, a large PHEV battery may need to be passively cooled by refrigerant, which is also associated with the interior Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) cooling system. For proper sizing of the condenser, chiller etc., one has to account for the battery cooling and cabin cooling as one system. There are also many thermal actuators on a PHEV, e.g. control valves, pulse-width-module (PWM) pumps, electric compressor, electric coolant heaters etc.