The shortage of power lines is hurting the automotive industry, prompting some to speculate that it could accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.
Most of the wires in the industry are made in Ukraine, but production has stopped since the beginning of the war. This has prompted some carmakers to move production to other countries. For example, Mercedes began to buy equipment from Mexico, and some suppliers in Japan have increased capacity in Morocco. Production lines are also being built in Tunisia, Poland, Serbia and Romania.
On average, a car with an internal combustion engine has 3.1 miles (5 km) of cables that are connected to each other. talk to ReutersBentley CEO Adrian Hallmark said the British carmaker fears losing 30 to 40 percent of its car production by 2022 if it can’t find new suppliers.
Although Hallmark said Bentley could find alternative sources of production, it focused on developing simple decorations for electric cars similar to those used by Tesla. These ropes can be made in sections in automated production lines. They are also lighter than traditional equipment.
Also read: Volkswagen has delayed the release of ID.5 in May due to a lack of wiring.
“The Tesla model is a completely different concept of the wire, we could not change it overnight,” said Hallmark. “This is a radical change in the way we build our cars.”
According to wire and cable supplier Leonie, many automakers work with it in automated solutions for EV wiring. In particular, the company is developing modular belts, which will be divided into six or eight parts, which will allow automated production. BMW is one of the car manufacturers that wants to use such modular belts in the future.
California startup CelLink has recently created an automated, flat “flexible belt” used by a number of electric vehicles. The company’s production lines can switch between different belt designs in just 10 minutes. According to CEO Kevin Coakley, it will take CelLink only two weeks to ship the rebuilt threads to replace the conventional wire, compared to 26 weeks.
