In this study, an air conditioning system using carbon dioxide as a refrigerant was developed for automotive cabin cooling. Experiments have been carried out to examine the steady state and dynamic characteristics of this system. The system consists of a compressor, a gas cooler, an evaporator, an expansion device, an internal heat exchanger and an accumulator. The compressor is a variable displacement type, driven by the electric motor, and the gas cooler and the evaporator are aluminum extruded heat exchangers of micro channel type. The $CO_2-refrigerant$ charge, the compressor speed, the air inlet temperature of the gas cooler, the air inlet temperature and the air flow rate of the evaporator and the cooling load are varied and the performance of the system is experimentally investigated. As the compressor speed increased, cooling capacity increased, but the coefficient of performance was deteriorated. As the cabin air temperature or the air flow rate to the cabin was set high, both the cooling capacity and the COP increased. In the cool down experiment with 1.0 or 2.0 kW of heat load, the dynamic characteristics of the air-conditioning system were investigated. For a given capacity of compressor, cool down speed was monitored, and the temperature change was acceptable fur low heat load condition.