Auto Industry Steers to Ultrasonic Splicing

Seriuosly? Aluminum wiring in automobiles?

What a receipe for failure and poor quality automobiles.

High vibration and high moisture exposure in combination with the brittleness and shrinkage of aluminum coupled with existing poor repair practices will definitely create the ultimate "throw-away" automobile.

If automobile manufacturers are actively searching for a way to enforce "planned obsolescence" this will surely lead the way.

We have enough issues with poor quality crimping methods on copper wiring in today's automobiles I cannot imagine what it will be like with aluminum.

Switching to aluminum wiring in a vehicular applications makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

First of going to a high resistance material for wiring will not make wiring harnesses smaller lighter or better.

Second I have yet to ever get into a vehicle and think, 'Man. I wish I didn't have this massive wiring harness in my way of more elbow and leg room'. In fact over the years I have found that scrapping newer vehicles that going after the wiring harnesses for their copper has gotten to the point that it's barely cost effective.

Simply put there is not enough copper in the overall harnesses to justify the time and efforts to take it all out of the vehicle. 15 #'s of plastic jacketed copper wiring gets at best $1.50 a pound and just doesn't cost justify the two or so hours it takes to separate it from the body.

None of it adds up unless they are just after trying to make vehicles and have shorter lives before getting junked out due to electronics related breakdowns which at this point even with copper wiring in vehicles still counts for way too high of percentages for vehicles being scrapped out.

Good old programmed obsolence scum goes hi-teck. What else is new? S.M.