Technology

Higher voltage allows for fewer amps. Higher amps creates more heat and requires thicker cables which cost more and add weight. So it's substantially less copper since the wires don't need to be as thick.

I can't give exact numbers, but going from a 12/24v to 48v wiring harness will reduce the harness weight. I don't know if that's on a linear scale or not in terms of reduction.

A thinner wiring harness would also be easier to manage and place, e.g more bendable, less space required to place it.

It also gives you more leeway if you do want to push more amps to something without having to get into the really really big unwieldy wires that are very difficult to shape.

24v would work, but I imagine the thought is, if we need to create a whole new supply chain for automotive parts at a different voltage, why go to 24v when we can go to 48v and get even more benefits? The process is already happening, others have some hybrid 48v usage.

Someone else could comment on this, but without knowing more, I would speculate that higher voltages would even allow some sort of shrinking of the components themselves since internally they wouldn't need to support as high of amps either, but that's just my speculation.

Edit: Just some hypothetical numbers. If a wiring harness is 150lbs and lets say 48v gets it to 50lbs, that's a $375 cost savings in copper alone. That's also a ton less copper used/mined across the whole auto industry once transitioned. At 67 million cars a year, that would be 6,700,000,000 lbs of copper saved per year.

ok i work in a kind of tangential industry and can kind of answer this probably

in general the higher the voltage the smaller the current, which you're generally happy about because your 1) electrical losses and 2) cable/wire diameter are both proportional to current

the tradeoffs being 1) it gets harder and more important to isolate the circuit (e.g. your wire insulation that prevents the 12V bus from shorting out to the vehicle chassis now needs to be thicker) and 2) all the stuff people make for cars (i dunno, windshield wiper motors, radiator fans, whatever) is currently for 12V

in general this move probably makes sense, provided they're able to figure out their supply chains, and if tesla can position themselves as being like the first company to figure out a bunch of these 48V components at scale that's probably going to be really good for them. they did a kind of similar thing with the charging infrastructure if i understand currently, like now the tesla charging cable is the de facto north american standard