Hundreds of pounds of wiring harnesses in a car seems completely insane.
Why haven't we started switching to fiber optics for more stuff? Even for home use it seems like fiber would be the way to go, aside from the hassle of terminations if you were doing it DIY.
0_____0 · 1d ago
More copper is bad for cars, because it's expensive, and it's heavy, in that order.
Fiber isn't cheap to work with. Termination is involved, whereas copper wire is terminated with a crimp that costs on the order of a cent or cents, if not completely automatically then using automated strip and crimp tech.
There's also the small issue where you can't supply power over fiber optics, and indeed these power conductors are the heaviest given the currents required at the standard 12-ish volts.
There's been a move toward 48V vehicle DC busses but they're not common yet, last I checked.
m463 · 11h ago
it seems like it's already being used for >20 years
First how does fiber fix them running extra conductors?
Secondly fiber is crazy fragile. It only makes sense in places like data centers or long links where the extra bandwidth actually makes a difference. Using it pretty much anywhere in a home is dumb unless you're running some sort of commercial side business/hobby doing video editing or ML or whatever.
Why haven't we started switching to fiber optics for more stuff? Even for home use it seems like fiber would be the way to go, aside from the hassle of terminations if you were doing it DIY.
Fiber isn't cheap to work with. Termination is involved, whereas copper wire is terminated with a crimp that costs on the order of a cent or cents, if not completely automatically then using automated strip and crimp tech.
There's also the small issue where you can't supply power over fiber optics, and indeed these power conductors are the heaviest given the currents required at the standard 12-ish volts.
There's been a move toward 48V vehicle DC busses but they're not common yet, last I checked.
search for POF or MOST
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOST_Bus
First how does fiber fix them running extra conductors?
Secondly fiber is crazy fragile. It only makes sense in places like data centers or long links where the extra bandwidth actually makes a difference. Using it pretty much anywhere in a home is dumb unless you're running some sort of commercial side business/hobby doing video editing or ML or whatever.