Tesla's wiring harness and controller iterations

When talking about electrical and electronic architecture, I think there is a very interesting thinking: with the popularity of the next generation of intelligent vehicles, in the process of domain control system iteration and harness design iteration, how will the number of cables and electrical connections other than EE components change?

Following this thread of thought, I re-turned tesla's Part List and The Wire Diagram to explore the evolution of the vehicle harness assembly and the change of value quantity:

● I mainly target the homemade domain controllers, homemade core controllers and powertrain domain controllers (2 + 4 + 4 = 10), to count which MCUs are used, which low-voltage connectors are used.

Then go and count which connectors and ECUs are used in external controllers - this is partly due to the similarity with other car companies, and it seems that there are currently 7-8

Figure 1. The whole vehicle comes with control and grooming of the main connectors

●The entire 12V cable mainly includes:

12V battery harnesses, instrument panel and console harnesses, door and trunk harnesses, front bumper and front harnesses, headliner harnesses, main front and body harnesses, rear bumper and subframe harnesses, seat belts and windshield harnesses, and a list of coaxial and special cables in model 3 cm.

Figure 2. An overview of the 12V harness of the Tesla Model 3 vehicle

Part 1 Tesla domain controller

Tesla's design is based on the main control domain controller (infotainment and Autopilot) and the power distribution and left and right body controllers.

● Central computing module

Mainly including: infotainment system, assisted driving system and vehicle gateway communication system; the gateway is divided into Private CAN, Vehicle CAN, Chassis CAN three-way CAN (backbone network)

●Private CAN

Customized, power steering, braking (I-booster+ESP) and airbag controllers connecting 6 core homebrew controllers (infotainment/Autopilot, electric drive module, VCR controller, left and right body controller) and several core external components chassis. These are Tesla's core systems, carrying information exchanges involving vehicle safety, the most basic drive, chassis control and other functional modules

●Vehicle CAN

Connects the home-made components (three body controllers), the high-voltage management module, the VSC (Security Controller) and external components of the electric compressor and steering information to achieve traditional body domain functions (load control, air conditioning, owner access) and high-voltage management

●Chassis CAN

The most traditional, connected tire pressure, braking, steering, air bags, etc., Tesla should be in this regard as a safety consideration

Of course, these are the main communication connections, distributed on the communication interface of this controller - my understanding tesla has gradually compressed the ECU of non-essential external suppliers, in fact, we can no longer see pure ECUs, all of which are electromechanical fusion or electronic control units with safety functions.

Figure 3. Connection of instrument cluster harnesses

Figure 4 below makes more sense because in fact this controller mainly needs to connect with the external video Sensor interface these relatively high-speed interfaces. Since this aspect is rapidly evolving, with the increase in screen interfaces, Camera, and Lidar, the focus increases in this section.

Figure 4. Coaxial and special cables

Part 2 Tesla's three main controllers

This part is more content, I will start today, tomorrow to each part of the interface and chip to do the expansion. Let's look again, the three integrated controllers actually integrate a lot of functions, which have been elaborated before.

Figure 5. Tesla's three core homebrew integrated controllers and three-segment wiring harnesses

● Front body module

Responsible for the 12V battery, power distribution and thermal management functions, such as the wiring harness below, because in the front of the body, the wiper, the front load compartment, external lights and air conditioning are put in, this harness connection and functional block diagram we will sort out tomorrow, iteration to Gen3

Figure 6. Model Y money control module

●Left body control module

Focusing on the traditional body area of lighting, entry and other functions, the air conditioning system contains a blower motor drive distribution, I understand here to achieve where the load is, the control is the nearest configuration, this controller iterates to Gen3

▲图7. Model Y的L BCM

●Right body control module

Mainly responsible for air conditioning, windows, internal and external lights, parking, parking auxiliary signal acquisition and other functions, but also includes a part of the air conditioning system sensor signal acquisition, load drive, as well as some high brake lights, position lights and left and right reversing lights drive, etc., iteration to Gen3

▲图8. Model Y的R BCM

Summary: I've been thinking about it lately, and as Tesla does generations of iterations in chips, functional design, software, and production, we really have to think about where this is disruptive to traditional automotive electronics. Connect all the information to see what the car companies do, how Tier 1 cooperates with such car companies, and what are the core opportunities.