Tesla promises an electric car without rare earths for the engine. How will China take it?
At its 2023 Investor Day presentation in Texas, Tesla revealed its plans to produce its next generation of EV motors without rare earth minerals. As the world leader in the electric vehicle market, Tesla's plan to produce permanent magnet motors without rare earths, if successful, could have a significant impact on the rare earth market, especially on the Chinese monopoly of rare earths rare.
“As the world transitions to clean energy, the demand for rare earths is soaring and not only will it be a little more difficult to meet this demand, but rare earth mining poses environmental and health risks” , said Colin Campbell, vice president of Powertrain Engineering at Tesla. “We have designed our next drive unit, which uses a permanent magnet motor, to not use any rare earth materials,” he announced.
Currently, Tesla's Model Y uses three types of rare earth materials: about 500 grams of one and 10 grams of two others. But in Tesla's next generation permanent magnet motor, according to Campbell's presentation, no rare earths will be used. Campbell did not specify what materials will be used to replace the rare-earth components.
Tesla also said that from 2017 to 2022, the use of rare earth materials in the Tesla Model 3 decreased by 25% due to improvements in the efficiency of the propulsion system.
Shortly after Tesla announced it was eliminating rare earths from its electric vehicle motors, China's largest supplier of rare earths, Northern Rare Earth (600111.SHA), saw its share price plunge nearly 10%. to March 10. Share prices of two other major rare earth suppliers, China Rare Earth (0769.HKG) and Shenghe Resources (600392.SHA), also fell 5.9% and 10%, respectively.
Compared to traditional exciter generators, permanent magnet motors, especially rare earth motors, have a superior magnetic energy product and coercive force, i.e. the ability to resist demagnetization. This makes them reliable and highly efficient. The energy conversion efficiency of rare earth permanent magnet motors typically reaches 90%, and the best ones exceed 98%.
However, the abandonment of rare earths would constitute an enormous threat for China, the leading country both in the extraction and in the processing of this type of rare and expensive minerals. The abandonment of these materials could be seen by Beijing as a real threat to its global industrial position and we could witness a reaction against the former Californian and now Texan company which is focusing heavily on Far Eastern markets.
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Article Tesla promises an electric car without rare earths for the engine. How will China take it? comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/tesla-promette-unauto-elettrica-senza-terre-rare-per-il-motore-come-la-prendera-la-cina/ on Sat, 18 Mar 2023 07:00:52 +0000.