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.
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!
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.
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.
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
Wasn’t there just a big scandal at Ford over relying on AI to manufacture vehicles and ending up with a bunch of defects?
❤️ 😁 💕
We already know that established American cars are crap, I didn’t think that needed to be said.
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.