Looking at the current design photos I see that the high voltage (orange) cables feed directly to the wheels due to having the motors mounted in the wheel. I am concerned that in time, with the suspension movement, those high voltage wires would suffer from metal fatigue and eventually fail or worse break lose and short circuit onto the metal frame of the car.
@simon herbert Good question, but not a problem: Consider how ABS sensor cables also feed directly to the wheels, with the suspension movement not being an issue. The HV cables will basically be like a bunch of ABS cables grouped together.
With appropriate routing and wire/sheathing choice, the bend angle in the wire should not be too great and I don't foresee a problem here. Getting a conductive wire out to a wheel on a moving suspension is a much easier technical problem than getting a driveshaft carrying high torque or a pressurized hydraulic brake line out to the same wheel.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/energy-scavengers-static-electricity-could-power-the-world this could be used to generate electricity for interior electronics and possibly more. it can be placed wherever there is friction, like between these wires in this case, possbly where things spin often like steering wheel column, even knobs etc.
Imagine those organic generative designed suspension parts gleaming with PVD chrome. Too bad they would be hidden away.
Aluminum is conductive, and I would not want to rely on the insulating properties of the coatings they put on the aluminum to protect it from corrosion, assuming those layers are nonconducting. There appeared to be a lot of conductive materials in the area where these cables attach. A short might do some very bad things to the battery as well, although I would hope they have some protection in place for that. PVD chrome would be a nice touch, which is a 3-layer powder coat system that would be highly insulating.
There's no metal in the frame of the car -the only metal is in the front suspension subassembly and I think that's aluminum.
They have said repeatedly that the cables are not dressed properly yet. Copper cables can be very flexible when they have a high number of individual strands of copper woven together into a larger cable, like a rope. The strands slip past one another instead of transferring the shear stresses to the surface and causing fatigue. They also have to make sure they add strain relief right at the wheel to limit the bending. This is all definitely doable, and this team seems to be on top of details like this.
I heard that “lines” we see on this development vehicle do not represent the production which will be tucked away...
More developmemt vehicles and beta, gamma and delta vehicle coming...where I suppose we will see it evolve to the production design ¯\_(ツ)_/¯