tesa introduces more sustainable tapes for automotive electrical systems

Sustainability

New wire harness tapes with solvent-free adhesive and recycled backing material are used to bundle and protect thousands of cables

It is one of the most vital parts of the vehicle, but it is rarely mentioned in reviews. A car's electrical system is similar to the human nervous system. It connects all the components and when it's working as it should, you don't even notice it. To pull off this miracle many people have to work together flawlessly while using excellent tools and materials like our wire harness tapes which are now also available with a more sustainable, recycled PET backing.

To better understand the crucial role of the wire harness tapes, let's take a closer look at the electrical system. It consists of up to 8 km of cables and can weigh 60 kg, which means it is the largest and heaviest bought-in subsystem in the vehicle. With up to 40 different wiring harnesses, 700 connectors and more than 3,000 individual cables with various diameters, the complexity is enormous. Therefore, the importance of electrical components continues to grow as improved functional safety, infotainment, electrification and autonomous driving require additional electrical connections.

tesa adds four more sustainable solutions to wire harness assortment

In this highly demanding environment, our wire harness tapes are indispensable. Wrapping the cables creates order, protects them from heat and abrasion, and dampens the noise when they touch the body as the vehicle moves. Our tapes have reliably met these requirements for many years. Yet for us at tesa, sustainability is a top priority and high-volume products like wire harness tapes are at the top of our list when it comes to reducing our environmental footprint.

Car manufacturers in Europe and around the world are also asking for more sustainable solutions. For this reason, we have launched the new 61xxx product series. Currently, we have added three tapes with a post-consumer recycled PET (PCR PET) backing to our wire harness assortment, with two more to be introduced by the end of 2024. All the tapes are manufactured using tesa’s well-known and established solvent-free coating technologies and adhesives. They contain between 80 and 100 % recycled material in the backing and reduce CO₂ emissions by between 30 and 35 %. In addition, all five tapes offer good ageing resistance and excellent cable compatibility.

Tapes for noise dampening and abrasion protection

Two of the already available tapes are designed for noise dampening in the passenger compartment. tesa® 61623 is available in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, while tesa® 61638 is distributed in North America and Asia. Both products have a PCR PET backing with 80 % recycled content. They have a total thickness of 250 µm and 269 µm and offer temperature resistance of up to 105 °C, making them ideal for use in the passenger compartment.

The third tape, tesa® 61036, is mainly used to protect the cables against abrasion. It has a 260 µm PCR PET cloth backing with 100 % recycled content and a temperature resistance of up to 150 °C.

The two upcoming product launches, tesa® 61616 and tesa® 61026, will be available by the end of 2024. tesa® 61616 has a solvent-free rubber-based adhesive as well as a rPET fleece backing with >80% recycled content, combining excellent noise dampening and high abrasion resistance. tesa® 61026 is a rPET cloth wire-harness tape with 100% recycled content of the backing and mass-balanced adhesive, providing high abrasion protection and high temperature resistance in the engine compartment.

Contact us to learn more about sustainability and future trends

The sustainability of components will become even more important in the future. Other trends include crash protection tapes, which secure cable harnesses from potential damage and safeguard the functionality of crucial components. As automation advances, various products will be offered on log rolls and spools to increase efficiency and quality. To learn more about these trends and our new, more sustainable wire harness tapes, please get in touch with us or your distributor!

If you have any questions, please reach out to us

Christian Oswald

International Product Manager
Electrical Systems

Maximilian Pieper

International Product Manager
Electrical Systems

01Background: Wire harnesses

In the past, the wire harness was a price-driven mass product. With autonomous driving and electrification, however, it is becoming a strategic and safety-critical component of the vehicle. Both the control system and the powertrain will rely entirely on the electrical system. At the same time, cars are more customized than ever. A wide range of features are available in a car's configuration, which means that each wire harness is unique and can only be manufactured by hand.

In fact, up to 90% of harness production is manual. Wires are assembled on long tables, with two or three people working at a time. For each harness, the right wires must be selected, bundled, attached to connectors, and taped. This last step alone, manual wrapping, takes 25 to 30 percent of the total assembly time.

02tesa improves sustainability across the board

There's no room for mistakes with wire harnesses. They are the first component to be installed after the body is built and are difficult to repair or replace. For this reason, automation (and the elimination of human error) along the entire value chain of wire harness design, manufacturing and assembly is a long-term trend in the industry. However, since automation only makes sense for repetitive processes, reducing the number of variants and complexity of the wire harness is a prerequisite.