What's the signal connection? Does this use CANbus? Ethernet? What?
Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
81–90 of 182 posts
Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
#82> Today a single vehicle typically requires over 200 connections—and the number of electrical I initially thought this was referring to the connector between the charge port on the EV and the charger base station. Had to think for a second and realized it’s the electrical connections between the various components in an EV. Glad to know I don’t have to carry 200+ dongles in case I buy an EV.
That must be only the high voltage connections, right?
(Semi-permanent) High voltage connections are usually made with spec-torqued bolts, not plastic connectors. These are for the "low voltage" (<=48V) components spread throughout the vehicle.
Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
#83Tesla really deserves some kudos for pushing the 48V architecture and the Ethernet-based communication. It drastically simplifies the wiring mess that is in a typical car. And it's not even close. Just watch the teardown of Cybertruck and compare its wiring to something like F150.
You'll be sorry when this move further hamper repair efforts and the TCO of owning a vehicle goes up.
Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
These looked keyed to me. Aside from the bulge on the top of the connector where the lock attaches to it's mate there is a middle vane that extends 2/3 way down with a little bit of a J hook on it.
That's the latch, not a key. Keying prevents putting the wrong plug in a receptacle. Usually that's done with notches on the receptacle and ridges on the plug.
You can use the ridge that the latch attaches to as part of the key structure.
There is also a J-shaped structure inside the plug that would function as a key as well, prevents the plug from starting when rotated 180 degrees.
==
------
| | |
| / |
------Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
#85With the appropriate grain of salt due to the source, standardizing those power connections would probably be a good thing. Also, speeding up the adoption of 48V, the industry has been talking about it for so long!
Grain of salt due to the source? What is that supposed to mean?
Tesla is so far ahead when it comes to these things (48V architecture), there literally is no other source in this case.
Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
CAN is slow. At best it's around 1Mbit, but you get into electrical limitations. So you have to run multiple CAN buses in parallel and carefully manage bandwidth limitations. My Chevy Volt had 4 different CAN buses and one additional LIN bus. This can all be replaced with just two Ethernet buses: for safety-critical and non-critical uses. And the gigabit speed provides plenty of bandwidth for any reasonable sensor tr…
It's unlikely that the multiple CAN buses are being used to increase speed by, say multiplexing them. In general, vehicles use multiple CAN buses for enhanced security. For example: things like diagnostic ports are often on their own CAN buses so data can't be directly injected into onboard systems.
All but one CAN bus in my Volt were connected to the OBD port. The unconnected bus controlled the high-voltage battery contactors and some other critical stuff.
The "main" bus was saturated with data, more than 80% of bandwidth utilization at 512kbs. And it kinda had a mix of everything, from street names to be displayed on the dashboard to ECU messages. The other two buses had some random messages, with no rhyme or reason for the split ( https://vehicle-reverse-engineering.fandom.com/wiki/GM_Volt ).
Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
These looked keyed to me. Aside from the bulge on the top of the connector where the lock attaches to it's mate there is a middle vane that extends 2/3 way down with a little bit of a J hook on it.
I think by keyed it isn't just "can't be plugged in upside down" but also "can't be plugged into the other plug that's basically the same but connects to some other subsystem." Ideally a system like this would let you select some per-subsystem physical lockout mechanism.
Have they said there isn’t a mechanism for individually keying connectors? There might be something optional, even if it’s just blanking pins.
Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
These looked keyed to me. Aside from the bulge on the top of the connector where the lock attaches to it's mate there is a middle vane that extends 2/3 way down with a little bit of a J hook on it.
I think by keyed it isn't just "can't be plugged in upside down" but also "can't be plugged into the other plug that's basically the same but connects to some other subsystem." Ideally a system like this would let you select some per-subsystem physical lockout mechanism.
That level of keying would be done at the harness/electrical engineer level. You shouldn't put two same plug ends at one termination site.
You really couldn't control it at plug or part level.
Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
#89Tesla really deserves some kudos for pushing the 48V architecture and the Ethernet-based communication. It drastically simplifies the wiring mess that is in a typical car. And it's not even close. Just watch the teardown of Cybertruck and compare its wiring to something like F150.
You'll be sorry when this move further hamper repair efforts and the TCO of owning a vehicle goes up.
You can say that about any new standard. With that logic we'd all be stuck with knob and tube wiring.
Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity
#90Tesla really deserves some kudos for pushing the 48V architecture and the Ethernet-based communication. It drastically simplifies the wiring mess that is in a typical car. And it's not even close. Just watch the teardown of Cybertruck and compare its wiring to something like F150.
> Tesla really deserves some kudos for pushing the 48V architecture and the Ethernet-based communication. For the record, 42V systems were experimented with in the 1990s: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42-volt_electrical_system In the 2011 German automakers agreed to 48V as the next step after 12V: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/48-volt_electrical_system BMW was the first the first with Ethernet: * https://www.marv…
This has been a real head-scratcher for me. BMW and other automakers could have vastly improved their cars by switching to 48V a decade ago, but they still keep just plodding along with 12V.
I have no explanation for this.