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Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

tesla.com

111–120 of 182 posts

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not sad they didn’t work with a hundred companies and take tens of years and still have nothing to show for it. what a ridiculous counterfactual. We have plenty of wildly successful standards that weren't just thrown at consumers and called a standard.

IDK man, when I think of standard connectors I think of clunky junk: CCS which was all engineering and no focus on human centered design with its clunky connector that also wiggles in ports. all of the USB connectors including USB-C, with it mandate to support so many different edge cases that cause cables to not always be compatible with each other defeating the purpose. Bluetooth again with so many edge cases that…

The points of standards is that they solve one or more problems for many constituents well enough so that all adopters gain in things like supply chain, design ease, and interoperability. They are rarely going to be optimal for every specific use case. They also often derive from specific designs by a specific company

Adding a standards body into the mix is going to add complexity to the process by definition, but shouldn't be taken as a default "bad", since there are tangible benefits to non-corporation-managed standards. Otherwise they wouldn't exist.

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#112
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can simplify the wire mess today by using more CAN bus devices. What is ethernet bringing to the picture?

I'll bet a hidden factor here is development and testing. They can probably develop for a car ethernet lan with a desktop pc and car "peripherals". Not that there aren't canbus cards for pcs, but still.

This sounds like the real answer. Replacing an automotive standard with Ethernet is going to reduce friction onboarding junior webdevs with MacBooks, and enable a more stable higher turnover labor intensive organization.

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can simplify the wire mess today by using more CAN bus devices. What is ethernet bringing to the picture?

Central bus instead of many point to point connections. Look at how much fewer cabling the cybertruck has.

CAN is also a bus, that's not really a point in favor of ethernet.

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe 50V is a safety limit.

And that's because of your skin resistance. Around 50V is when voltage starts to overcome it.

usually. It's very possible to get a shock off of significantly lower voltages in bad conditions (very sweaty skin, for example).

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#115
post #18

Tesla 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…

> BMW was the first the first with Ethernet:

BMW ENET is non-standard, DoIP is standard. :)

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#116

> LVCS...is available in industry-standard light blue Is this tongue-in-cheek, or is there a reason manufacturers care about the color?

Mid voltage (~48-60) uses light blue.

Ideally you should be able to differentiate high voltage (orange, iirc), safety (yellow), mid voltage, and everything else.

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#117
Molex and others may as well get behind this. EVs are driving all the content (as you can imagine, electric vehicles are way more profitable than IC not only because they have additional connectors but also because they tend to have more advanced in vehicle entertainment).

The other reality is that all of the Chinese OEMs will generally work with the companies like Molex, TE, Amphenol, etc just long enough to let them shoulder the R&D cost and then reverse engineer and vertically integrate the part in their supply chain.

If there is a chance to leverage their scale and supply chain to compete where there is known demand, it’s worth it to be early in and then be able to help OEMs customize the reference designs as needed.

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#118
post #85

With 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.

There is so much Elon and Tesla hate, these comments are so weird.

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#119
post #55

Those look much like AMP automotive connectors. Using one kind of unkeyed connector in a car may be a bad idea. Things can be plugged in wrong during repairs. There's a lot to be said for making connectors not fit where they shouldn't. Especially in automotive, where many connectors are plugged in blind, by feel. This simplifies manufacturing at the cost of repair. If it can be plugged in wrong, it will be plugged in…

> Using one kind of unkeyed connector in a car may be a bad idea. Things can be plugged in wrong during repairs.

I tried to lower the window in a Ford shortly after leaving the dealer. It fried the lock. Somehow they were connected together by accident. I agree dumb wires should be hard to mix up like that - both via orientation and similarity.

Re: Standardizing Automotive Connectivity

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telephony has been using -48V as a line voltage for a very long time, probably > 100 years.

Is that for power deliver, or signaling?

-48VDC was standard for powering telephone equipment, and is also common standard for direct current datacenter connections.

Signaling on POTS easily hit over 100V, btw.

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