The role Litz Wire plays in Autonomous Vehicles
Featured Product from New England Wire Technologies Corporation
Our Future with Autonomous Vehicles
The road ahead
A beam of light traveling through space covers 186,282 miles in one second. In a year, it travels about 5.88 trillion miles, which is one light-year, and it’s a long distance by anyone’s measure. Now though, the Federal Highway Administration reports that U.S. motorists drove a collective 3.2 trillion miles in 2016—more than half a light-year. Human beings did almost all of that driving; autonomous cars accounted for only a small percentage in 2016. However, that’s all about to change.
A key issue engineers are working on today involves wireless charging of batteries. Wireless charging eliminates the need to wrestle with heavy duty charging cables or the expense of devices like Tesla’s “snake charger.” Wireless chargers can achieve efficiencies in the range of 95 percent when the charging device uses resonant LC circuits. However, efficiency falls off quickly if (a) sending and receiving coils are physically misaligned, even by as little as a couple of centimeters; (b) the air gap between send and receive coils is too great; or, (c) the impedances of sending and receiving circuits are mismatched.
Charging pads placed on the garage floor are available today. Litz wire is the preferred material to use in designing and building copper coils that have low resistance, high Q-factors and deliver high efficiency. New England Wire has been manufacturing Litz wire since 1898 and has deep expertise in its design, fabrication and applications. Litz is made of individually insulated copper strands twisted together in designs best suited to each application. Litz wire overcomes the two major losses found in any copper coil design—the skin effect and proximity effect, both of which compromise wireless charger efficiency.
Learn more about the role Litz plays in wireless charging here.
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About New England Wire Technologies
New England Wire Technologies is a privately held, employee stock ownership company with a rich history dating back to 1898. Our Lisbon, NH facilities consist of over 385,000 square feet of manufacturing, quality/testing, tooling/machine fabrication, and office space. We are an ISO9001:2015 registered company with more than 400 employees operating three shifts, five days a week.
New England Wire Technologies in Lisbon, NH is the primary and largest corporation in the MJM Holdings Group manufacturing all of the wire and cable sold under the New England Wire Technologies name. Other subsidiaries include New England Tubing Technologies (Lisbon, NH), Bay Associates Wire Technologies (Fremont, CA) and New England Interconnect Systems (Santa Ana, Mexico).
Whether working with customer supplied specifications or designing to a unique requirement, New England Wire Technologies' design teams develop innovative, one-of-a-kind wire and cable solutions. On-site manufacturing processes include wire drawing, plating, braiding, cabling, insulating, and extrusion services. And, since all of our proprietary equipment and tooling is designed and built in-house, we have complete control while also offering quick modifications when needed. Through true vertical integration of manufacturing processes our customers' design-to-market curve is the shortest in the industry.
