Tesla shares 48V architecture with other automakers

It is with respect to ground, the positive pole of the battery is connected to ground.

The telegraph system figured this out very quickly. Most water in nature has at least a bit of salt in it, which is present as positive sodium ions and negative chloride ions. By making the outdoor wiring negative with respect to ground, the chloride ions are repelled, and such wires corrode much more slowly than those that're positive with respect to ground.

Since most of the telegraph network, later the telephone network, is outdoors, this is a pretty big deal.

There is a lot of off the shelf 12V equipment you can buy. Plus even more that is sitting in garages ready to be installed in the next vehicle. Cars are manufactured in enough quantity that it would only cost $0.01 per vehicle to design it (plus parts costs which are probably the same), but that is still a few million to the bottom line if they use the same 12 volt radio. Add to that that ICE cars everywhere have 12 volt starters, and you can buy 12 volt jump start kits: when (not if!) a battery fails to start the ICE you better be able to jump start it from a 12 volt battery - this is a safety issue.

Tesla doesn't have ICEs, so the safety concerns are lost on them. Thus all 48 volt makes some sense. They still need something for all the accessories people have.

Because we already have the 12V infrastructure and part supplies in place. You're disrupting things for no benefit. We've been running split 24V/12V systems for decades now in automotive applications. It's not that big a deal to change that to 48V/12V systems as many European car manufacturers have done.

As mentioned in the 42v article they went with that due to 48v nominal being too close to 60v max on alternator/fully charged which is the limit shock hazard.

Not sure what chemistry/cell count will be for the 48v battery (which I assume it has) but 48v could mean 13s - 16s packs.

Hi, automotive electrical is my job.

There's quite a bit of very thick wiring in a car, not just the starter wire, but boring stuff like audio amplifiers, rear window defrosters, power seat motors. Those things don't draw a ton of power, like maybe just a few hundred watts, but at 12 volts even modest powers require extraordinarily thick wires, especially when you account for bundle derating.

This requires large terminals, which requires larger connectors, and there's the complexity, because MOST of the wiring in the car is just signals, or low-power stuff, which can run over thin wires and small terminals. (Minimum size is limited by mechanical durability rather than electrical conductivity.) Making a "hybrid" connector that has a couple large cavities for large terminals, and a bunch of small cavities for small terminals, is a pain. Having separate connectors for heavy power and for signals introduces more assembly work and negatively impacts testability. The wires have different stiffness and bend behaviors, they exert different amounts of force on weather seals, they have to be terminated on different machines at different points in the assembly process.

By allowing power wires to be nearly as thin as signal wires, you can use simpler connectors with unified terminals. Manufacturing gets simpler, harnesses get lighter, assembly gets faster and easier.

Weight is also a huge deal, every ounce counts. There's upwards of 100 lbs of wiring harness in most cars, more in larger or premium models with a lot of accessories. If half of that weight is signals and won't change with voltage, but the other half is heavy power circuits that'll get 4x thinner at 48v, it's significant weight savings.

Furthermore, switching heavy current means massive relays or FETs and the heatsinks thereon. If you can reduce the current, those components get lighter too. Audio amplifiers get lighter, speakers get lighter (stupid heavy-wound 2-ohm speakers to get reasonable volume out of low voltage drive? Nah, use standard 8-ohm now that you have real voltage at the amplifier!), all sorts of things get lighter.

That's all in addition to the electric power steering already mentioned by others. EPS can easily move 1kw for short periods, and has stupidly huge wiring to do that at 12v. It's still chunky at 48v, but a lot less so, and can use more common terminals and connectors. Replacing a hand-assembled bolted connection with a machine-crimped and clicked-together connector improves reliability or reduces testing process overhead.

It's really significant, and it's embarrassing that the industry fell flat on its face in the late 90s last time they tried. Here's hoping this takes off.