Discussion on the development trend of automotive wiring harness

1 Central relay box integration

The central relay box is the carrier for the installation of fuses, relays and other accessories, and the number of wires must be connected to the traditional central relay box, which often causes a large number of wires to pile up near the relay box, occupying space and impeding installation.

Picture: Traditional electrical box

The development of the electrical box has experienced the traditional hard wire type, stamped sheet type, to the current PCB plate and intelligent fuse box, the following is the development process of the electrical box. Figure: The development process of the fuse box

Intelligent electrical boxes will be standard applications for future models. With the increasing complexity of electrical architecture and control logic, there are very high expectations for miniaturization, intelligence, software, especially upgradability, although there are some so-called intelligent electrical box applications, but the price is high, and it is not suitable for large-scale promotion. But this is just the beginning. There will certainly be more smart products in the future.

2 The power supply voltage is increased

With the development of the automotive industry, there will be more and more electrical equipment on the car, which will lead to more and more power consumption, and the greater the power required. If the voltage is not increased, the current will increase, and the current will inevitably increase the cross-sectional area of the wire, in other words, it is necessary to thicking the wire, so that the main line bundle on the car will be thick as an arm. How to improve the voltage of automobile power supply system and improve the efficiency of automobile has become the focus of research in various countries. It has been suggested to change the current 12 V power supply used in cars to 42 V (3 times the generator output voltage of 14 V), because in theory, the voltage increased to 3 times, the current will be reduced by 65%. In this way, the nominal section of a single wire will be reduced to 1/3 of the original, and the problem of the increasing overall quality of the wire harness will be solved. Due to the wide range of technical transformation of products involved, the implementation of the program is not small.

3 large wire diameter aluminum wire

The future development trend of automotive wiring harnesses is thinner, lighter and thinner. Among them, the copper wire weight in the automobile wiring harness accounts for 75%, which is the main lightweight direction. At present, the main method to replace copper material is aluminum instead of copper. At present, the conventional is to use aluminum wire instead of commonly used copper wire, which is also the international mainstream automobile Cable manufacturers such as Aptiv, General Cable, Leoni, Coroplast, Sumitomo Electric, LS, and G&G, figure: aluminum wire

4 Wiring Harness layout towards the trend of waterproof layout, highly integrated and lightweight development.

With the rapid development of new energy vehicles and the continuous growth of market ownership, users' requirements for the safety, reliability and environmental protection of electric vehicles continue to improve, new energy electrical appliances on vehicles have increased significantly, and new lines such as high-speed video data transmission have emerged. Therefore, how to arrange a large number of different kinds of wire harnesses more effectively and reasonably in the limited automobile space has become a problem faced by the development of automobile products. Due to the special requirements of electric vehicles for vehicle protection level, EMC and energy consumption, the development trend of electric vehicle wiring harness layout is mainly to waterproof layout, highly integrated and lightweight trend.

· Unified vehicle planning routes

· Paths on both sides are evenly arranged

· Component system is highly integrated to simplify wiring harness layout

· The fixed mode is IP69K protected

· Main line integrated layout

Figure: Increased protection level

Automotive wiring harness layout generally has H type, Y type, E type and Sichuan type. In general, if the high and low pressure layout planning together, the general priority is to the Sichuan layout, that is, the high voltage harness in the center, the low voltage harness distribution on both sides, to avoid the EMC problem caused by the high and low voltage harness layout.

5 Power distribution to the power bus and power line communication composite technology development

From the Power distribution technology in the electrical box, it has gradually developed to the new Power Bus technology, which realizes a new stage of the composite transmission control management of low-voltage power supply and communication. Figure: Power distribution technology development

This will also completely subvert today's wiring harness layout principles, resulting in a new change in wiring harness layout.

6 Low voltage connectors to miniaturization, modular, standardized development

At present, the increase of automotive electronic equipment, the interior space of the car is becoming more and more tight, miniaturized wire harness connectors can effectively save space and make the interior layout of the car more reasonable. At the same time, miniaturized connectors are usually lighter and smaller than traditional connectors, helping to reduce the overall weight of the car, and the materials used and manufacturing costs are also likely to be reduced, bringing economic benefits to car manufacturers.

7 The future of high voltage connectors: high standards and modularity

"High voltage connector" is a connector that serves high voltage systems in automobiles.

The first generation high voltage connector the second generation high voltage connector the third generation high voltage connector the fourth generation high voltage connector the fifth generation high voltage connector

Developed on the basis of industrial connectors; The metal shell is changed to a plastic shell on the basis of the first generation of products; On the basis of the functions of the second generation of products, the overall shielding function is added, and the secondary unlocking function is added. On the basis of the functions of the third generation of products, high and low voltage integration, flat terminals, large current busbar solution and liquid cooling technology are combined to meet the electrical and temperature requirements.

The technology orientation of supercharge and fast charge for new energy vehicles also affects the on-board connector. As the battery capacity increases, the body becomes heavier and heavier, and the use of connectors and wiring harnesses increases, so component modularization becomes more and more important. Functional integration and modularization can better meet the safety requirements of the vehicle. Light weight, easy installation, lower cost, improved aesthetics, etc., these are the benefits of modularity and integration. Safe, reliable, small size, less cost must be the industry needs, conducive to the automatic assembly of wiring harness, conducive to the automatic installation of the vehicle, will also be the trend, let us wait and see!

8 About architecture and platformization

The ultimate of research and development is platformization, and the ultimate of production is customization. On an independent controller, if there will be some hardware redundancy for different configurations of the vehicle, it is necessary to carefully consider whether this function should be done, or whether this function should become standard, otherwise it is difficult to achieve a win-win situation between research and development and production.

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