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Car companies, starting with Volvo last summer, have laid out plans to electrify entire lineups of vehicles. But the fine print makes it clear that the coming decade and beyond will focus not just on massive battery packs powering electric motors, but also on adding a little extra juice to the venerable internal combustion engine.
Increasingly, that juice will arrive in the form of new electrical systems built to a 48-volt standard, instead of the 12-volt systems that have dominated since the 1950s. Simpler than Prius-type drivetrains and less expensive than Tesla-scale battery power, the new electrical architecture both satisfies the demands of cars made more power hungry by their gadget load and enables the use of lower-cost hybrid drive systems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/electric-cars-48-volts.html
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday February 26 2018, @01:04PM
To actually put some numbers to this, something like #6 THHN good for 75 amps current sells retail by the foot (most expensive way to buy stuff) for about a buck a foot. Likewise there's bazillions of switching power converters but a 7812 drop in switching replacement from CUI like the V7812W-500 inputs any crap up to 75 volts and outputs 12 volts at half an amp (not enough for headlights, plenty for some kind of generic dashboard panel), lists commercial grade but lists automotive temp range?, a bit under $11 at digikey for one dropping to $9 or so for assembly line sized orders. Obviously you can integrate "high to 12" regulation on a board cheaper than a separate sealed assembly, and most digital stuff runs off 5 or 3.3 volts anyway so simply replace the 12-to-3.3 with a 48-to-3.3
There are also scaling issues, such that a stereotypical golf cart 48 to 12 "10 chinese amps" converter is also a sealed assembly ready to run and it doesn't cost 20 times $11 or $220, amazon sells it for $14. So, you know, you're paying like $9 for a hermetically sealed box and $1.50 for control circuitry and the inductor and switching trans are like 30 cents for half an amp or a couple bucks for 10 chinese amps.
Anyway the point is if 48 volt current carrying wires are free and 12 volt wires cost $1/foot or more likely the difference in wire gauge is $1/foot, then converters being about $10 even the cruddiest redesign would be "OK" for cable runs over 10 feet or so. Which is actually kinda big for a car. So other than emergency stopgap measures for obscure sub assemblies, the rollout financially has to be replacing 12-to-3.3 volt on board supplies with 48-to-3.3 not going 48-to-12 then 12-3.3