3 ms·
The article says that the wiring harness is longer than it needs to be. My guess would be that there are several hundred wires in the harness, each signal paire
by klyrs 4y ago
The article says that the wiring harness is longer than it needs to be. My guess would be that there are several hundred wires in the harness, each signal paired with a ground, so an extra few feet (an extra fraction of an inch per mounting point?) would really add up. That extra length might make it easier for the installers to wrangle; efficient design often comes at cost.
Edit: and, come to think of it, this is a Steiner Tree problem with some very interesting constraints. Optimizing very large instances like this is a Hard Problem. Even if everything is locally optimal (unlike my hypothesis above), it can still be far from globally optimal. Recomputing a solution, spending longer on the computation, can make a big difference!
- schiffern 4y agoThe comments come about 48 minutes in on Ford's quarterly conference call.[0] When they talk about "length" they are adding up the length of all the individual wires inside the harness. So it can be any combination of: • a bundle is too long • a bundle contains more wires than necessary (eg switch to a shared power and data bus) • a bundle is completely unnecessary (sometimes separate modules can be combined/eliminated) • in some rare instances, wireless data transmission can be used • ultimately, switching from 12 V to medium-voltage (48-54 V) can eliminate multiple wires needed for high power modules. [0] https://youtu.be/XDtE-Stzol8 https://youtu.be/XDtE-Stzol8