How is 48v better than 24v, for example? I don’t really know much about car electronics
It’s got a lot of new things to them
800v power train
Newer 4680 cells
~85% custom chip controllers (up from 60s on Y)
48v power electronics is instead of 12v, which is fairly new to everyone and the supply chain isn’t as robust as the 12v one, but long term it’s good for industry.
Folding the stainless steel at scale
9000T press, biggest one made
The wheels that can turn on front and back
I’m sure there’s more they didn’t tell us.
It went from being a weird vehicle (love or hate it) to a new technology platform.
666dollarfootlong@lemmy.world 8 months ago
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Higher voltage allows for fewer amps. Higher amps creates more heat and requires thicker cables which cost more and add weight. So it’s substantially less copper since the wires don’t need to be as thick.
I can’t give exact numbers, but going from a 12/24v to 48v wiring harness will reduce the harness weight. I don’t know if that’s on a linear scale or not in terms of reduction.
A thinner wiring harness would also be easier to manage and place, e.g more bendable, less space required to place it.
It also gives you more leeway if you do want to push more amps to something without having to get into the really really big unwieldy wires that are very difficult to shape.
24v would work, but I imagine the thought is, if we need to create a whole new supply chain for automotive parts at a different voltage, why go to 24v when we can go to 48v and get even more benefits? The process is already happening, others have some hybrid 48v usage.
Someone else could comment on this, but without knowing more, I would speculate that higher voltages would even allow some sort of shrinking of the components themselves since internally they wouldn’t need to support as high of amps either, but that’s just my speculation.
burgers@toast.ooo 8 months ago
ok i work in a kind of tangential industry and can kind of answer this probably
in general the higher the voltage the smaller the current, which you’re generally happy about because your 1) electrical losses and 2) cable/wire diameter are both proportional to current
the tradeoffs being 1) it gets harder and more important to isolate the circuit (e.g. your wire insulation that prevents the 12V bus from shorting out to the vehicle chassis now needs to be thicker) and 2) all the stuff people make for cars (i dunno, windshield wiper motors, radiator fans, whatever) is currently for 12V
in general this move probably makes sense, provided they’re able to figure out their supply chains, and if tesla can position themselves as being like the first company to figure out a bunch of these 48V components at scale that’s probably going to be really good for them. they did a kind of similar thing with the charging infrastructure if i understand currently, like now the tesla charging cable is the de facto north american standard
spezz@lemmynsfw.com 8 months ago
The charging cable isnt de-facto the standard. It is the standard now. All new vehicles from the big 3 and many foreign manufacturers will utilize NACS.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Pretty sure we’re still waiting on Stellantis?
atempuser23@lemmy.world 8 months ago
So here is some information on where the 48v standard is coming from. microcontrollertips.com/what-is-the-ideal-etherne…
it’s new to Tesla but not automotive.
xpinchx@lemmy.world 8 months ago
4 wheel steering isn’t really new. (but your point is still taken)
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I did say “to them”
800v isn’t new either, others use it
bingbong@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
In telecommunications at least, -48V is the standard. It will still be a massive issue but not impossible for suppliers to adapt (with delays). The biggest problem I see is the high cost associated with such low demand, unless more manufacturers start switching over.
atempuser23@lemmy.world 8 months ago
48v is in automotive as well. Most of the cable manufacturers are using PoE Ethernet. Belden has product lines devoted to this. It vastly simplifies wiring all the systems of a car together.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That will be a big issue. I think the entire industry will switch, but it’s not going to be immediate.
Once the CY is fully ramped, they’ll probably start to see some of those costs come down a little, but 250k a year pales in comparison to the whole industry using something.
Teslas Gen 3 platform will add to that scale and help too.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Pretty much the entire list seems like features that have existed for industrial applications.
Which, sure, is challenging to transition to a new company and scale up to consumer levels of production and down to consumer levels of cost. But I agree everything about this truck seems iterative.
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 8 months ago
What would you ever consider new in any vehicle if you look at it like that?
Solid state batteries? Not new, it’s just changing the anode but a battery is a battery so it’s just an iteration.
paultimate14@lemmy.world 8 months ago
… Not much.
I’m not really looking to the automotive industry for completely new innovation like that. If I’m going to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a car, I’m probably going to keep it for at least a decade and I value it being reliable and easy to repair. Mature technologies have a lot of advantages over new innovations there.
I’m not the one claiming that these features are new or innovate, and I’m not the one claiming that being on the cutting-edge of technology is a good thing. Musk is.