Lightweight - The number of wire harnesses is significantly reduced

As the industry shifts from gas-powered vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs), most Oems are jumping on the bandwagon by rapidly creating battery electric vehicles (BEVs) using their traditional ICE architecture. This approach was not sustainable, and creating BEVs using the architecture designed for ICE led to inefficiencies, wiring difficulties, and so on, thus increasing the total cost and weight of the car. For example, according to Amberford, using the ICE architecture of a typical SUV to create a BEV results in a wiring system that is 13kg heavier than an ICE vehicle (adding another 5kg to all the packaging needed to accommodate the ICE architecture around the traction battery and drive system, The high voltage cable required by the BEV has increased by about 8 kg). The new centralized architecture will significantly reduce the weight and cost of wiring harnesses, especially low-voltage wiring harnesses. The domain framework divides the various physical areas in the car and adds the area controller as a high speed data and power collector. Upward integration into the zone controller reduces the physical complexity of the wiring harness in its current state and significantly reduces the number of ECUs. In a study with a vehicle manufacturer, Amberford found that using a zone controller could integrate nine ECUs and cut the use of hundreds of individual wires, reducing the weight of the vehicle by 8.5kg.

Cost saving - The production of wiring harness, wiring, installation requirements will be qualitative change

The shift from distributed architecture to centralized architecture will not only simplify wiring harnesses and accommodate the lightweight trend of electric vehicles, but most importantly will reduce costs at all stages of the vehicle production lifecycle, including development, manufacturing and post-production costs. For harness production, the production cost is reduced from the following important aspects. By integrating upwards. Consolidating functions distributed across multiple ECUs into a smaller set of domain controllers enables the vehicle to get rid of a large number of enclosures, brackets, relays, fuses, terminals, and wires. Through intelligent fusing. As a distribution hub, the zone controller naturally includes intelligent fusible modules. The traditional fusing fuse in relay is replaced by semiconductor to realize intelligent fusing. In the past, wires had to be designed to be 30% larger in diameter than they needed to be, increasing their capacity at peak load and preventing fuses from blowing. By contrast, with smart fusing, a vehicle can set the physical limits of how much power the wires can carry for a specific period of time. This means that it is often possible to shrink the wire gauge (e.g., from 4mm2 to as low as 2.5mm2), thereby reducing weight and saving wiring costs.

By directly reducing the labor force. Because the domain controller architecture simplifies the physical complexity of wiring and connects directly to the sensors, the wiring harness is drastically shortened, meaning that only 1-2 people are needed to install it. By contrast, with the 10 or more people required to install today's most complex architectures, Oems can save a lot of labor costs. By automating production. Automated wiring harness assembly is easier to achieve because the zone controller divides the vehicle's basic electrical structure into more manageable components. In the wiring cost, labor costs account for about half. As labor costs rise, Mr. Amberford expects them to increase by 25 percent to 50 percent over the next five years for different assemblies. Automated production will substantially offset rising labor costs.