A global strategy which aims at providing a method to manage a PEMFC thermal behavior of an electric vehicle is proposed. The Energy Management System (EMS) plays the role of the power flow supervisor and provides the time-to-start the fuel cell based on the battery energy depletion during the trip. Taking into account the freezing operating conditions and given this time-to-start estimation, the fuel cell temperature management system calculates the most appropriate time to start heating the stack in order to reduce heat loss through the natural convection. When the stack is started, the exothermic reaction heat is used as a self-heating power source to further increase the stack temperature. The simulation results have shown that the proposed approach is efficient and can be implemented in real-time in Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles.