The next-generation Tesla electric vehicle (EV) motor will be made without rare earths, as the company highlighted “environmental and health risks” of mining the group of critical minerals.
Tesla hosted an investor day last week where it unveiled long-term expansion plans and where its battery technology is going.
It was an opportunity for the company to brandish its ingenuity and disparity from its competitors. It was also an opportunity to highlight its continued evolution away from rare earths.
What was demonstrated in Tesla’s Model 3 car – the cheapest Tesla in Australia – which was launched in 2017 and incorporates 25 per cent less rare earths than prior models, will be further evolved with the company’s next-generation EV motor.
“As the world transitions to clean energy, the demand for rare earths is really increasing dramatically,” Tesla vice president – powertrain engineering Colin Campbell told investors.
“Not only is it going to be a little hard to meet that demand, but mining that rare earth has environmental and health risks.”
Campbell’s preamble was followed by the unveiling of an EV powertrain that consists of zero rare earths.
“We have designed our next drive unit, which uses a permanent magnet motor, to not use any rare earth materials at all,” he said.
“So … we can make lower-cost products that are still efficient and compelling, and we can make them at scale. We can use less constrained commodities – silicon carbide and rare earths. We’re going to build them (our products) all in compact, high output factories that are easy for us to build quickly.”
As Tesla looks to make its vehicles more affordable while maintaining their efficiency, the company is considering its manufacturing process from all angles, with reducing the usage of certain minerals just one part of the equation.
As Campbell highlighted, “if we want to make EVs more accessible to people, they have to be cheaper”.
“We reduced the drive unit cost by about $US1000 and we don’t think any other automaker is even close to that number,” he said.
“Finally, a bigger a factory is, the longer it takes to build. If we can build the same number of cars from a smaller factory, we are going to be able to scale EV production faster. Our next powertrain factory is 50 per cent smaller than the one behind me today, even though it has the same capacity.”
Tesla’s new powertrain design could signal rare earth demand concerns from one automaker, but many are questioning the broader ramifications.
MP Materials, which mines rare earths from its Mountain Pass mine in California, took to Twitter to re-establish its footing following a $US5 dive on the New York Stock Exchange after Tesla’s announcement.
“Did we miss something?” the company said.
“Motor design has & always will involve trade-offs. We expect innovation. And we expect motor diversity in the EVs of the future, just as there is in the EVs of today. We’ll bet an Optimus that automakers will buy much more rare earths in the future.”
Independent critical minerals research and advisory firm Adamas Intelligence wrote an article suggesting it was likely Tesla would be replacing its neodymium magnet-powered motors with ferrite, which it deemed a weight and efficiency downgrade.
“While it’s been demonstrated that a ferrite-powered PMSM (permanent magnet synchronous motor) can match or exceed the performance of an NdFeB-powered alternative across one or more parameters, this performance comes with a significant weight or efficiency penalty that has historically made the switch unattractive,” Adamas said.
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