The global automotive industry, valued at $ 4,359.98 billion in 2024, is a giant that is upheld by smaller behemoths, as a single car requires thousands of different components to become a fully functional vehicle. Thus, if you don’t have the capital to become a major automobile manufacturer, you can still become a supplier of small car components that are still nevertheless important to the development of smaller components that are still essential to the assembly of cars.
Wire harnesses are among the most important components for most automobiles, as they enable electricity to run through the vehicles, powering up the other components. Designing wire harnesses for automobiles is a tough process since you will have to take into account a lot of different factors in order to create custom automotive wire harnesses for different automobiles.
Why Designing Custom Automotive Wire Harnesses
Each vehicle has a different design, layout, as well as purpose. For this reason, they will need different wire harnesses that are capable of safely sustaining them with power depending on the purposes of the vehicle. For example, a truck that requires a lot of power to move will certainly need a different wire harness design compared to a sedan.
Determining the important factors that will have the most impact on the custom automotive wire harness designs will be a crucial part of the design process.
The Plan: The Starting Point for the Custom Design
The plan of your custom automotive wire harness will be the starting point for you. This plan will eventually contain all the technical specifications as well as drawings that show how the wires will be connected and where connectors will be installed. The plan also includes essential information such as the type of materials used, and the gauge of the wires used in the project.
Designing wire harnesses will involve two teams with separate specializations: Mechanical engineering and electrical engineering. The mechanical engineers will dive into how the wires work and interact with the surrounding environments, thus ensuring that the wires will not be damaged if used too often. On the other hand, the electrical engineers will work on the electrical logic to make sure the wires trigger the right reaction from the harnesses, preventing short circuits or similar accidents.
As both of these teams will work together on the same project, it is important that they should have access to collaborative tools to ensure robust team-to-team communication, removing any ambiguity or mismatches. Modern cloud collaboration tools are abundant now, and some, like Figma, enable team members to chat directly with one another during the design process, vastly increasing the quality of inter-team communication.
Factors to Take into Account During the Design Process
Now that the team has all the tools they need to start working, you will have to go through the important factors to take into consideration when designing custom wire harnesses for automobiles.
The Purpose of the Vehicle
The first thing you should keep in mind is what your vehicle is going to be used for. This will help you to create the best wire harness layout that supports the role perfectly. For example, a sedan is for cruising and for urban environments. Thus, the wire harness should be as dynamic and flexible as possible. The wire harness should also be invisible to the human eyes so that no one trips on it while moving in and out of the vehicle.
The Materials of the Wires
Within each wire of the wire harness are long copper or aluminum wires that have been chosen specifically due to their amazing conductivity. Of these two materials, copper has always been the standard material for wires, but aluminum is gradually becoming an attractive choice due to how cheap this material is while still providing top-notch performance.
Do keep in mind that your wires should comply with international standards such as ISO, SAE, and UL. These golden standards will make it likelier that your wires will be chosen over those of your competitors due to their high reliability.
Durability
Wire harnesses will have to be durable enough to withstand vibration as well as abrasive damage. If the wire harnesses are damaged during the operation of the vehicle, it is likely to pose a serious danger to the driver. A great way to greatly improve the durability of your custom wire harness is to apply fire-resistant tapes or employ a process called heat-shrink tubing, which adds an extra layer of protection to the wire harnesses.
The Overall Layout
Take into account the space within the vehicle you are working with. If you have access to a model vehicle, lay out the connectors as well as the terminals at their expected positions, and then run the wires through them. This will help you to visualize the design more easily and determine how you wish to run the wires throughout the cabin.
The Importance of a Simplified Design
Whenever possible, you should always take a step back and look at the design plan from an outside perspective to see if you could simplify the design even further. A simplified design helps you to keep production costs at a manageable level, and it also makes cable management much easier, helping you to easily produce the wire harnesses at scale.
Taking an outsider’s perspective will also help you to detect any error in your design. Though all wire harnesses go through rigorous testing at the end of the production process, a lot of errors can be detected from as early as the design phase, so you will gain a lot of benefits from this.
The design process for custom automotive wire harnesses begins with coming up with a plan, working together with two main teams to create a seamless design, simplifying the plan, and then doing thorough testing. If you wish to create custom wire harnesses but lack the technical knowledge to do so, contact us at Arttangent for more details! Our team of experts will guide you through the process to ensure that you get nothing but the best design plan!
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