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Originally Posted by PulsarBeeerz
No, it’s not that simple. All your assembles and subsystems have to be designed around a new higher voltage architecture. That cost millions of dollars. You have to work with suppliers to get a new production lines stood up. That costs money, The cost in wire is negligible vs the weight savings. But again ICE and EVs are already too heavy. 50bs of extra harness/battery weight, eh. Aluminum wire wouldn’t be used as the tensile strength is much lower and it doesn’t conduct as well as copper. It is also more susceptible to breaking from the harmonic vibrations that all rolling chassis experience.
Lets note get into how much more expensive 48V batteries are vs 12V. That hypothetical $100 turns negative rather quickly.
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Right. My example was just a hypothetical about how $100 over a million cars can add up, but the savings will be more than $100. There will likely be immediate savings, even considering the move to a 48v low-voltage battery, but it'll grow even more over time, especially with the price of copper going to go up because countries are building their grids and moving to EVs.
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Some Tesla cars use up to 82kg of copper. For example, Tesla’s Model S uses a mile of copper just in connecting the battery packs to all electronics.
As reported by MINING.COM, to achieve Tesla’s goal of building 20 million cars per year, the company would need 1,820,000 tonnes of copper, roughly 9% of global production in 2022 or almost two years of production at Escondida in Chile, the world’s largest copper mine.
Based on Musk’s prediction of a reduction to a quarter of today’s copper usage, at annual production of 20 million electric vehicles, the company could save more than 1.3 million tonnes, which equals over $10 billion at today’s prices (Source).
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The answer to that problem is 48, not 42 as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would have you think. By upping the voltage to 48 instead of 12, the current drops 4 times. That means - in theory - 4 times thinner cables. It is estimated that Model S comes with about 60 kg of wiring with a cost upwards of $1,700. If Tesla really wants to deliver 20 million electric cars a year - eventually - saving more than $1,200 per car on wiring means extra $20 billion in savings (Source).
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Saving 60kg/130lbs would be nice, but I'm guessing it is mostly about saving money and avoiding bottlenecks from material scarcity. FWIW, 12g aluminum can support the same current as 14g copper, but will weigh about half as much, so weight could drop another 10kg/22lbs, not to mention the price of aluminum is typically less than half the price of copper. Several car companies like Toyota and Honda use aluminum wiring already. I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla could create a custom alloy from aluminum that meets their system needs.