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: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @04:25PM
Copper has the same problem. Neither metal has a fatigue limit -- i.e., both copper and aluminum will inevitably fail under cyclic loading/unloading (no matter how small the load). Aluminum does fail faster, though. If you don't use your jumper cables more than a couple times a year (like most people) then either kind could last a lifetime.
So as with most things in life, it's a cost/benefit tradeoff. CCA should have a substantially lower upfront cost. It will also weigh less, which might be an advantage (keeping it in your car -> less mass -> less fuel consumed? This effect is probably in the noise).
On the other hand, aluminum is thicker than copper for the same conductivity, so CCA cables will be physically larger. Also your copper cables will probably be worth something in scrap later while the CCA cables will probably be worthless.