Ferrari and BMW are rolling out new models featuring lightweight, cost-effective aluminium wiring, accelerating a shift away from copper, the dominant material in electric wiring since the invention of the electric battery two centuries ago.
Oh boy, even more increased fire risk!
Planned Obselecense, baby. More opportunities to sell replacement parts.
Nah, that’s gonna set the whole car on fire, and then it’s all over once the batteries catch.
that’s gonna set the whole car on fire
Let me know when you start seeing Ferraris burst into flames. Because that’ll be an entertaining display.
The Teslas and Chinese cheapos are gonna be the first to go.
Anyway, here’s a picture of a Ferrari on fire
The Teslas and Chinese cheapos
Wasn’t there just a big scandal at Ford over relying on AI to manufacture vehicles and ending up with a bunch of defects?
Anyway, here’s a picture of a Ferrari on fire
❤️ 😁 💕
We already know that established American cars are crap, I didn’t think that needed to be said.
We already know that established American cars are crap
There was a period, in the 70s/80s, when they were absolute crap. And then Japan started building non-crap cars, so Americans actually had to compete. For a brief, beautiful decade in between '98 and '08, you could get a Ford Focus for under $20k and it would drive 150k miles doing 50+mpg and almost never break.
Then Toyota started cheaping out and Ford got extra slack, and it was a race to the bottom again.
Aluminum wiring is totally fine, it just needs to be thicker. It’s still lighter weight and cheaper - probably a big win to be honest.
It expands and contracts and oxidizes far more readily than copper. I don’t trust corner-cutters to engineer around these potential hazards. We’re gonna see these Teslas light up like fireworks in a few years.
If it’s for general vehicle wiring it’ll be mayhem.
If it’s chunky busbars and such in the battery modules and drive motors… maybe not so much.
Yeah, would probably be fine for a bus bar. They certainly didn’t go into enough detail in the article.
Not really. It’s much more chemically reactive and less springy than copper, and more prone to fatigue. I’ve heard the newer alloys address this problem at least partially, but it was banned from most residential wiring applications for good reasons after a lot of houses burned down.
And houses are known for their “movement”. What could possibly go wrong.
That’s crazy, with these high-voltage platforms they’d need some BEEFY cables- copper is something like 60% or so more conductive than aluminum, so you need a thicker aluminum wire for the same current capacity. That also makes it more difficult to work with, as a thicker cable will be less flexible and have a larger minimum bend radius.
I’d be curious to see how they’re designing terminations that are resistant to aluminum’s significant thermal expansion, too- that’s generally a huge fire risk as the wire works itself free/loosens from the termination through thermal cycling and starts sparking.
Copper clad aluminum is also an option, though not sure how it works with DC current. If I recall correctly, ac current travels on the skin so just a coating of copper is sufficient.
IIRC, the skin effect only occurs in AC and not DC, as the alternating current direction changes the magnetic fields and thereby causes eddie currents via Lens’ Law. These eddie currents push the current out towards the skin.
These systems tend to be DC afaik, at least until you hit the motor where it needs some rectification anyway, so I’m not sure that a copper-clad cable would really make a big difference.
Not an electrical expert, though.
The issue with copper clad when it comes to DC is voltage drop issues. But that’s just DC in a nutshell lol.
I’m guessing it’s mostly for their ICE vehicles, low voltage stuff.
The article specifically covers how aluminum wiring is being used by Ferrari and BMW in their hybrid and EV platforms.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up going back to their ICE stuff too, though.
Tesla is not known for their ICE vehicles though.
