In recent years, there have been more and more vehicle controllers and sensors on cars, and the connecting wiring harnesses have become longer and longer, resulting in a continuous increase in vehicle costs. Electrical designers have made efforts to use data buses to reduce wiring harness loops, but the weight reduction effect has gradually reached its limit; Therefore, the application of aluminum wires is increasingly becoming a development direction.

1、 The advantages of aluminum wires

Compared with copper wire, aluminum wire has a lower density and is lighter in weight under the same length, making it one of the trends in the development of lightweight wire harnesses. The density ratio of copper to aluminum is 10:3, and the volume of purchasing 1 ton of aluminum wire is approximately equivalent to 3.3 tons of copper wire.

1.2 Low price and abundant aluminum resources. Global copper reserves are much smaller than aluminum, so copper prices are higher than aluminum, and copper prices are on the rise. Aluminum prices are relatively low and have less volatility. The amount of copper used in automotive wiring harnesses is large, and using aluminum instead of copper can effectively reduce the production cost of automotive wiring harnesses.

2、 Disadvantages of Aluminum Conductors

2.1 High resistivity: Aluminum has a higher resistivity than copper, which means that at a given voltage drop, aluminum conductors must have a larger cross-sectional area.

2.2 Low mechanical strength aluminum wires are soft, easy to bend, and have poor vibration resistance. Under the same conditions, the tensile strength of aluminum is only half that of copper, which can affect the crimping and pull-out force of the terminals.

The feasibility of using aluminum wire is that aluminum wire is a lightweight development direction in the wire harness industry, especially in the increasingly widespread application of battery wire harnesses. To verify the feasibility of using aluminum wires instead of copper wires in power lines, aluminum wire replacement technology was tested on a C-class vehicle. Single circuit, non twisted wire circuit, non grounded circuit, and non solder joint circuit were selected for power transmission, and non long-term continuous working dry area power supply circuit was preferred. Before and after carrying aluminum wires, a series of tests such as voltage drop test, thermal shock test, current carrying test, etc. were conducted on copper and aluminum wires, and road tests were conducted. Currently, the test results show no abnormalities, indicating that there is no significant difference between copper and aluminum media in these circuits. The solution of replacing copper wires with aluminum wires can be promoted in some circuits.