DC Dumps 42-Volts

After years of hype, it appears the bloom is off the rose for the development of 42-volt electrical systems and other non-essential technologies in the auto industry.

At least that's the proclamation from DaimlerChrysler AG.

During the auto maker's annual Innovation Symposium here, Stephan Wolfsried, vice president-electrical/electronics, chassis for Mercedes Car Group development and engineering, declares “42-volts is done with.”

The demise comes as a result of cost and the lack of 42-volt components. With the number of 14-volt systems on the market and their relatively low development costs, it seems unnecessary for auto makers to reinvent the wheel, Wolfsried says.

“Thecomplexity involved during the transition phase from 14-volt to 42-volt would have been uncontrollable. Neither are there 42-volt (light) bulbs, and it would have been necessary to transform the power supply to every LED and every microprocessor down to 14-volt instead of 42-volt,” he says.

“The higher voltage and, therefore, the higher energy storage would be offset by significant efficiency losses and a higher consumption, apart from prohibitively high costs which cannot be justified by direct consumer benefits.”

Today's 12- or 14-volt electrical systems have enough capacity to power the growing number of electronic devices in vehicles, even high-tech navigation systems, rendering 42-volt unnecessary, Wolfsried says.

Calling this latest thinking nothing short of a “paradigm change” within DC, Wolfsried lays down another ultimatum: Mercedes-Benz will not copy BMW AG's much maligned iDrive instrument control system.

“Functions that nobody uses and which benefit nobody have no place in the car,” he says, adding in the last year alone Mercedes has removed over 600 functions from its vehicles.

Functions being removed include the tunnel air-circulation system, which was activated by pressing the air re-circulation button for two seconds. The system immediately would close the air re-circulation flap and open the windows and sunroof a few inches to remove any contaminated or stale air that entered the car going through a tunnel.

CD-ROM and DVD-based navigation systems also will be phased out in the next two years, because the discs tend to warp at temperatures above 113° F (45° C), says Mercedes.

The auto maker will switch to hard discs, as well as Smart Media and PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Assn.) cards as storage devices for future navigation systems.

The goal is twofold: to improve the overall ownership experience while reducing quality glitches. Mercedes has been penalized of late because of less-than-steller electronics systems. Customers complain the buttons are confusing and systems break repeatedly. Mercedes wants to put a stop to this and boost quality in the process.

Mercedes also is shifting from fiber-optic cable to conventional copper for many vehicle communications applications because of problems related to the fragility of the fiber-optic cables.