If successful, this contributes towards the reduction of national security risk around rare earth supplies and supply chain located in a possibly unfriendly nation state (major deposits are in Russia and China) and also means you don’t have to establish rare earth mines or supply chains in your own countries (capital and environmental concerns). It’s a big deal!
Also, just as newer battery chemistries moved away from cobalt (a conflict mineral), this too is progress in countering arguments against EVs due to their material sourcing.
It's just a bit of a co-ordination / chicken-egg problem in that equipment probably has to be to handle 12V and 48V for a while during a transition period.
> are soon switching to 48V, to further reduce low-voltage copper wiring (copper being a 'medium-rare' metal)
In an interview by Munro[1] , Elon Musk previously mentioned the desire to switch to 48V together with the desire to use PoE. Combining data and power over the same wires.
There are different standard spellings, and pronunciations, in different places. In one dialect region it is "aluminium" (but they don't say "platinium" or "molybdenium"). In another it is "aluminum" (but they don't say "titanum" or "cesum"). It is arbitrary in both regions.
Why not? I^2*r says that running 75% less current will generate 94% less heat.
Existing copper wires would be a disaster if cars ran on a 3V system. Aluminum at 48V will be fine, as long as it’s sized appropriately the same way copper is today.
> Why not? I^2*r says that running 75% less current will generate 94% less heat.
Thats not the argument, you can do that now with copper cables.
Aluminium is a good conductor, but it is reactive, brittle and not as malleable as copper.
also, copper has almost half the resistance per meter than aluminium. So even for solid bus bars, it doesn't make that much sense, unless you have structural bus bars.
Most car wiring harnesses are affixed to structural members and don’t need to flex.
And twice the resistance doesn’t matter. So you go one gauge bigger. If the material is cheaper, more available, and suitable, that’s fine. We don’t insist on gold wires because they’re “better” than copper.
It’s all tradeoffs. I don’t see a reason to be philosophically opposed to aluminum other than “it’s possible to do it wrong”, which is of course also true for copper.
Indeed, but automotive wiring is subject to intense and persistent vibration and heat cycles. so all those ties become stress points for fatigue to cluster around.
I'm not saying its never a good idea to use an aluminium wire loom, but I'm struggling to find a situation where its required
It's not really the flexible thing you picture with the word "loom."
The place Tesla used this was for fixed rigid bus bars, notably the "cable" from the charge port to the battery.[0]
Previously they used traditional stranded copper. Now it's a solid aluminum conductor, wrapped in insulation and protected by an outer aluminum tube.
These are thick high voltage conductors. I'm sure Tesla did their homework on flex and fatigue.
As for resistance, this is why I mentioned conductivity-to-weight as being the critical metric. Copper is over 3x as dense, at 9.0 g/cm³ vs 2.7 g/cm³ for aluminum. It doesn't hurt that aluminum is cheaper and more abundant.
Comparing car design and operating conditions to that of airplanes is kind of silly. The operating conditions of aircraft are far better defined and restricted.
Additionally, aircraft airframes are regularly inspected and fully radiographed at certain intervals. Components that develop flaws are changed out when the flaws are detected. The same is not true of cars.
It is really funny when West is discovering magic of cheap aluminum for wires, while former Eastern Block is ripping aluminum wires from walls because it is no.1 reason for fires.
Aluminum is perfectly fine as a conductor, and perfectly safe. In the USA, we've used aluminum for most of our power transmission and distribution since the beginning of "the grid". Everything from the power plant to the meter at your home is connected with aluminum.
Where aluminum causes fires is due to the fact that it expands and contracts more than copper does, and it can oxidize and corrode when not properly cared for (for example, when dissimilar metals are used, or when exposed aluminum wire ends are not properly coated).
We can assume that someone at Tesla is familiar with the properties of aluminum and can insure that they are using the right connectors to mitigate these issues. (or at least, we can hope)
The other problem in house wiring is that when you tighten down the screw to attach the aluminum wire to the terminal, the aluminum work hardens, and expansion/contraction/vibration will cause it to break.
> It is really funny when West is discovering magic of cheap aluminum for wires, while former Eastern Block is ripping aluminum wires from walls because it is no.1 reason for fires.
Aluminum was used for a short time in the west for household wiring and was quickly outlawed.
I assume, for the same reason you don't want them in your house. It expands differently from copper as it warms, and the connections can loosen.
If Tesla has switched to aluminum I imagine they've found a way to fix that. Possibly by making the entire electrical system out of aluminum, so that it all expands the same way, or possibly a connector designed to avoid that.
The primary reason you don't want aluminum in your house is that homegamers will improperly do repairs, primarily replacing devices (receptacles, switches) with ones that are not rated CO/ALR rated. I doubt that failure will be as likely in the cars.
Properly terminated, there is no problem with aluminum wiring in your house. As another replier mentioned, most houses do have aluminum wiring in the run to the house and the run from the meter to the panel, and sometimes in the larger runs like stove and dryer.
It's also worth noting that the newer aluminum formulas like Southwire SIMpul, are not like the old aluminum like was installed in my house in the early '70s. But, buyers are still gunshy from the '70s, so copper is generally preferred
I don’t see why that’s relevant with the topic of reducing consumption of certain rare elements. Then failing at some of the goals shouldn’t detract from what has been accomplished. And if the end result is just electric cars that don’t use rara elements I think that’s a good thing, even without robotaxis
I assume that the relevance is that Tesla's claims don't count for much until they actually deliver. Elon Musk has a long history of misleading people about Tesla. Whether it's embellishment, overestimation of what they can accomplish, or outright lies is up for debate, but the fact remains that they habitually over-promise and under-deliver. I consider him and his companies to be completely untrustworthy. He could be selling water in the desert and I still would never buy another thing from him.
> Elon Musk has a long history of misleading people about Tesla. Whether it's embellishment, overestimation of what they can accomplish, or outright lies is up for debate, but the fact remains that they habitually over-promise and under-deliver.
I think that everyone should look on his "forward looking statements" with a higher than normal degree of skepticism. He does seem to pull off a lot of outlandish stuff, though, so it doesn't pay to be too skeptical.
> I consider him and his companies to be completely untrustworthy. He could be selling water in the desert and I still would never buy another thing from him.
I don't think that that same level of skepticism is warranted towards his statements about what is true today. But then again, I haven't been following him very closely, so maybe his pant are constantly on fire.
Reading the original post, I assumed all of the things listed (except for one) are things that has been done already and not just promised by Elon. Buy maybe I’m wrong.
The majority of Teslas being sold right now use lithium iron phosphate batteries already. This isn't just some future plan, it's already largely implemented.
He's literally already delivered motors without rare earth elements (for other purposes) in production Teslas for nearly a decade now. He's already done what he's said he's going to do, he's just going to do it more.
> Elon Musk has a long history of misleading people about Tesla. Whether it's embellishment, overestimation of what they can accomplish, or outright lies is up for debate, but the fact remains that they habitually over-promise and under-deliver.
This is about as silly as people who think he’s the messiah. He’s clearly over promised on many things, but he’s also delivered on a lot.
And spacex motto is turning the impossible into late, so he’s being pretty honest about his goals being off. What’s the issue? Why do you hate him so much?
If missing a forecast was illegal then literally every executive in the world would be in jail. Elon isn't especially bad at forecasting, in fact he may be much better than average, but it's hyper focused on every time. Every time Larry Ellison at Oracle misses a forecast it doesn't become a talking point that's repeated literally a billion times every time someone mentions a computer.
Tesla actually started with AC induction motors using no rare earths. I have that motor in my 2013 Model S. The BMW motor is a synchronous AC motor that doesn’t use permanent magnets. The Tesla announcement is about still using the high efficiency permanent magnet motors, but using permanent magnets without using rare earths (there are a few options, like iron nitride… this is an active area of research by folks like the University of Minnesota and Ames National lab in Iowa, often funded by ARPA-E as well as some startups trying to commercialize them like Niron Magnetics).
As far as I am aware, there is nothing rare about "rare earth metals". The only reason the west relies on places like China and Russia is because refining them is very very polluting, producing a lot of toxic by products. So we either do that locally and pay 100x more to fund the clean up after. Or we import from China and Russia where they apparently don't mind everyone getting poisoned.
So this isn't really anything to do with national security. It's a better moral outcome with some economic trade off...
The main reason this is looked at is that, while you are right in saying these materials resources are well distributed, China has been a major supplier for decades, buying out all their big competitors. The result is that they are way ahead of anyone else in the engineering processes to extract, process and transform these elements into viable products at scale.
If China were to stop selling them, everyone else would have a lot of difficulties replacing them right away and would need at least 5-10 years to pick up the pace.
The last time I went down this rabbit hole, I discovered one of the other reasons that China is effectively the refinement bottleneck is because of all the related patents that they've picked up over the years.
There can be more than one reason to do something… perhaps security isn’t the primary, but it is still in there. It is the startup time that relates to security.
It's weird though that they are reducing reliance on China for rare earth elements while simultaneously increasing their reliance on China for manufacturing.
I don’t think they’re increasing reliance on China. A lot of the presentation seemed to be about ways they’re actually reducing dependency on China. Giga Mexico, for instance, should have lower labor costs than Giga Shanghai. Scaling up across the board reduces the need for Giga Shanghai, which Tesla relied on to keep up with global demand.
They’re also in-sourcing electronics which should help give Tesla greater supply chain control.
Plus the non-rare-earth high energy permanent magnets thing is a pretty huge blow to China’s efforts to monopolize the rare earth magnet supply chain. China produces 92% of the rare earth magnets in the world, as well as mining the vast majority of the material and also processing.
Tesla doesn’t want to cut off China. But having less reliance on China helps prevent Tesla from being manipulated by the whims of Chinese government leadership, increasing Tesla’s bargaining power in China.
It's because this is a cost-cutting measure that has nothing to do with national security. Aluminum wires and worse magnets in the motors, both of which will wear out a lot faster, are there to reduce the cost to make a Tesla and shorten the lifespan of the car.
China is a currency manipulator, human rights abuser, and a non-democratic state. that is a country we have done business with, and looked past, but the US can't be "friends" with terms like that. The relentless anti china propaganda has nothing on the BS that china's state-owned media has said about the US over the last decade. The AVERAGE issue of global times is worse than trump's rhetoric.
Moral judgement in international relations is not a necessity. Please think of other countries that US is allies which with same attributes mentioned in your comments. i.e. Saudi Arabia. I'm not saying that it's right or wrong, what I do mean is there are different rules for engagement between countries than people.
Civilian casualty is the lowest-common-denominator. Right now, China is under scrutiny for current human rights abuses and a potential domestic ethnic-cleansing a-la third Reich. That's a slightly different situation than indiscriminate civilian casualty.
Honestly the whole Xinjang issue seems to be a red herring used by the West for their own purposes. They never cared about the plight of Muslims before (eg. military adventures/regime change in the middle east, support of apartheid Israel and suppressing the human rights of Palestinians), why would you expect them to actually care about Uyghur Muslims other than what this group can do to advance western fake moral outrage?
Trust me, I don't. I have close to 6,000 comments on this site, many attesting to my hatred of the United States and the dysfunction of it's government.
That being said, nobody is fooled by the ad-reductio distraction of "both governments do bad things". China is now (since Aug. '22) accused of serious human rights violations by the United Nations for their treatment of the Uighur population. Someone approved of it, and it's very likely the the current regime is aware of it. None of this stuff is up for debate, or diluted when you mention the US' own failings. It's just extremely embarrassing for China, who wants to be treated like a respected Western superpower, but can't own up to it's mistakes when they do slip up. They won't acknowledge Tiananmen Square, they won't let people debate Hong Kong, they won't deny the Uighur extermination, and now they're refusing to let the global stage investigate the origin site of the worst pandemic in a century. You can see why people would draw their own conclusions here.
Even if all of this was propaganda vs propaganda (which it isn't, but I'll entertain in good faith), China is still losing. Despite their authoritarian grasp on information, they can't control the global perception of them. It's the ultimate insecurity, and incompatible with the global ideals of information freedom. Again, even if you are right, and western affairs are controlled by a mysterious free-speech cabal/shadow-government, I don't see how it changes China's disadvantage on the global stage. It took a fraction of the world's military forces to repel Russia from Ukraine, preventing a sea-based invasion of Taiwan is probably easier than the average NATO wargaming exercise. And then China would be similarly disgraced, and forced to rectify their impulsive actions with a world that doesn't want to be a part of them. If they want to carry out their reunification plan, it would destroy them.
Moral judgements should be a larger part of I ternstional relationships.
That they are not, for a fiscal treason, is an absolute travesty.
We should - all - be demanding that our trading partners stand up for the things we believe in.
To sweep a genocide or abhorrent human rights record under the table - without even attempting to make a comment - is a sign of weakness, that every country has. For profit. Personally, my standards are higher than making a profit with one group, especially when there are always more groups.
No country is perfect, but shouldn't we try to convince others and as such, hold ourselves to a higher standard?
US is a war machine, can drum up support to invade any country even if they're lies, and in the last 300 years, it's hard to find a country that has abused more human rights. The birth of the US coincided with a genocide of native Americans, wars for more land, slavery of an entire people.
And yet, the US actually has allies. After all the crap the US has done, it still has allies. What? Why?
Interesting thesis. At the same time, China has few allies. Does that mean China has a poor economy and little power?
Maybe it's news to you but China has been poor for nearly 150+ years. In the past, China had the highest GDP in the world. But the opium trade, western wars, caused it to become as poor as it did. It's only in the last 10 years or so that China's economy has been big enough to garner more allies.
Even so, maybe propaganda has convinced you that China has no allies? For example, 37 countries signed a letter supporting China's anti-domestic terrorism tactics in Xinjiang.
In the early 20th century the US was opposed to European colonialism in China, opposed to the Japanese invasion of China. And opposed to the Communist takeover of China. The US is also opposed to Xi's dictatorship an threats towards Taiwan. And the Uyghur genocide.
So China does have a friend in the US. But Xi doesn't.
Part of that is that the last imperial dynasty to rule China was not Chinese, but ethnically Manchurian. A lot of problems came from that. Granted, that does not make it okay that the West helped carve them up. But a lot of their external issues in the past few centuries have internal root.
If the Han and the Manchurians could not get along, how is that the West's fault?
WRT "terrorism" in Xinjiang: I think non-Han minorities might have a different opinion than the official Beijing line.
I find it hard to think that the US (With it's many, many fuck-ups) is the only, let alone the -worst- guilty party in the last 100 years.
Slavery and native American genocides are pretty bad - as well as the countless countries US has invaded/bombed.
But anyways, are we trying to estimate which country has done more bad in the last 300 years? China or US? And are you willing to become more pro-China if we conclude that the US has done more bad?
>>Slavery and native American genocides are pretty bad
Any student of history would understand that China colonizing the north american continent would have been much much worse for Native Americans. There currently are slaves in China right now.
No, they are pointing out that for all of your bolstering, China today is doing things that the global purview thinks are far worse than what the US is doing, again, today.
Please remember that comments on HN are meant to be in good faith towards the discussion of the article, and regardless of any factual inconsistencies that may or may not be present in your statements, they are off topic and potentially trolling.
The US is a net food exporter. What you are saying is propaganda, not fact. The US is the largest food-Aid donator. The US has shipped millions of pounds of food around the world to feed people… for free. We are talking billions a year in spending.
You're talking about the past. The US isn't currently carpet bombing Vietnam, it isn't currently allowing slavery.
China, currently in 2023, is all the things the above poster says it is. A sabre rattling dictatorship that is intentionally oppressing its minorities. Chinese people are awesome but the Chinese state can go to hell.
This isn't to excuse Trump's sinophobia. He can go to hell too.
Chinese people are awesome but the Chinese state can go to hell.
Chinese people support the CCP. Most Chinese citizens are pro-CCP. So if you have a negative view of the CCP, then you should have a negative view of Chinese too.
But you're probably wondering why Chinese people support the CCP? It's because the CCP improved the lives of 1.4 billion people and is still improving their lives. GDP per capita went from $317 in 1990 to $12,000+ in 2022. And why would they overthrow the CCP now? Makes no sense.
But if the CCP needs to be overthrown and is no longer working for Chinese people, they will overthrow it. Chinese people have been overthrowing governments for millenniums.
> So if you have a negative view of the CCP, then you should have a negative view of Chinese too.
I disagree with the (admittedly large) subset of Chinese people who support the CCP, but me having a negative view of them as people doesn't follow from that.
> It's because the CCP improved the lives of 1.4 billion people and is still improving their lives. GDP per capita went from $317 in 1990 to $12,000+ in 2022. And why would they overthrow the CCP now?
I didn't claim that the CCP did nothing good and was all bad. There's clearly far worse alternatives than the CCP. Also, it's not accurate to attribute all of China's current success to the current CCP. A lot of it was the seeds planted thanks to the economic liberalization in the preceding few decades when the CCP was more liberal than it is today.
> But if the CCP needs to be overthrown and is no longer working for Chinese people, they will overthrow it.
Authoritarian states create mechanisms that make them difficult to overthrow.
>I disagree with the (admittedly large) subset of Chinese people who support the CCP, but me having a negative view of them as people doesn't follow from that.
That's funny. Chinese people support CCP. Chinese people want CCP to stay in power. CCP is made of Chinese people, and reflects quite a bit of Chinese culture. You want the CCP to go to hell. But you think Chinese people are awesome.
Are you just trying to be politically correct? It's ok to say you hate Chinese people and Chinese culture.
Chinese people are brought up in an environment that tells them to support the CCP and where vocal dissent is punished. Their centrally controlled media ecosystem is rigged against them being able to think and speak clearly on this issue. They have been the primary victims of the CCP since its inception. Also, Chinese people aren't a monolith. If you sorted Chinese people by how jingoistic they are I would probably dislike the top 10-20% or so on that basis but that doesn't generalize to every Chinese person, even those that tow the socially expected line of "supporting" the CCP.
I’ve lived in China and have friends there. People there aren’t told to love the CCP. They all have gripes about it like any people would have for their government. It’s not like North Korea. They do not want to overthrow it because the country is stable and their lives are improving.
You underestimate the power the people have over the government. When Chinese are pissed off, they will go on the streets and protest and demand changes. Just check the riots over banks and real estate there recently.
And why does the CCP want Taiwan back? It’s because their people demand Taiwan back.
I find it hilarious when people say they love Chinese people but hate the CCP. Either they’re disingenuous because they dislike both or they don’t understand China.
The CCP will allow a certain level of protest as a release valve but to extend that to the claim that the people can just casually "overthrow" an authoritarian state when push comes to shove is not right. If it reached a boiling point the tanks would roll out and the protesters would be killed or imprisoned.
> I’ve lived in China and have friends there. People there aren’t told to love the CCP.
Again, managed dissent. The real dissenters are in prison or worse.
> It’s not like North Korea.
I already said there's worse alternatives than the CCP. That doesn't absolve it from being an authoritarian dictatorship.
> I find it hilarious when people say they love Chinese people but hate the CCP. Either they’re disingenuous because they dislike both or they don’t understand China.
I already explained this to you, so either you are being disingenuous or you are determined to have a monologue. I am ending it here because this is a low value conversation.
As long as you play by their rules which include but are not limited to:
- As a business, living with the likelyhood that any govt forced partnerships with local 'private companies' are a huge risk of IP leakage. Or ghost shifts producing clones of your product.
- As a consumer, knowing that their censorship rules impacts(dilutes) media that is now produced for a 'global' audience
- As a human being, knowing that they have various prisons that are somewhere between the 'atrocities' the US is finger-pointed at globally and a 're-education' camp in North Korea.
> It's amazing how one Trump presidency and relentless anti-China propaganda in the mass media have convinced Americans that China is not friendly.
OK taking off -all- political glasses and looking at behavior of the populaces.
The world saw how US Citizens reacted for better or worse when told to wear masks.
Compare that to how China deals with Dissidents, or their initial Pandemic response.
Maybe bc China steal other countries tech (countless examples).
Or blackmail countries [1]. Or kidnaps people [2].
Or reeducate people because of their ethnicity and religion [3].
Or still declares herself as a WTO developing country while having a space station all alone. [4]
Do USA declare their self a WTO developing country?
Do US people disappear like they do in China? Jack Ma, Peng Shua, Bao Fan...
Is there any vocational, education and training state internment camps in USA?
Is there Great Firewall in USA?
USA can be a land of opportunities, but also quite a shitty country, I would never live there, but there's still rule of law and separation of powers. In China there's Xi Jinping rule.
China is nobody’s friend but China’s. You cannot interact with the Chinese government in anything other than a transactional manner. The only unfriending that happened is the US and China stopped agreeing on some limits, which hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.
Yea, this did not happen. I was living in China during most of Trump's presidency. People in China did not get their feelings hurt because of trade disputes. Everyone knew it was just business.
But US mass media propaganda took it to a whole new level with anti-China sentiment during Trump years. Perhaps it was a tactic to distract Americans of their real issues? Maybe put the blame on some other entity?
We know, which is why that line from the CCP is ridiculous every time they say it. You're missing the larger picture, nobody is upset at the people of China. I also don't fault China for doing how they do (I mean, apart from the genocide etc). They have been very successful at leveraging everything they have to pull the nation out of poverty. They did some rotten shit internally and externally to make that happen, but so have most nations.
But battery research is ongoing from a century at this point, we can't possibly think that Tesla just came out of nowhere and thought a solution nobody considered before such as using less rare elements.
It is most certainly a trade off and I'm not seeing where the cons are mentioned.
Moreover, lithium-ion batteries have by far the most efficienty energy density, so what is tesla getting rid of, most certainly not lithium, which is the bulk of the battery.
Disclaimer: I am no fanboy of Tesla; I think Tesla's lunch will be eaten by BYD, either alone or together with other Chinese EV manufacturers, in part because Tesla has been resting on its laurels for so long (still selling the model S!); but facts are facts.
> But battery research is ongoing from a century...
Tesla's claim is about motors, not batteries.
Tesla has implemented solutions that no one else has, such as their "two casting chassis", which Toyota engineers recently called " a work of art" and "genius". The 4680 cylindrical battery is also a Tesla innovation.
> It is most certainly a trade off...
It is not clear at all whether this announced motor is a trade off. It may be the way ahead to further improvements in the space of EV motors. More detail would be good to have; that much is true.
> Moreover, lithium-ion batteries...[lithium] is the bulk of the battery.
Again, this is about motors, not batteries. It's eliminating the neodymium and other "rare earth"[1] elements used in the permanent magnets present in nearly all EV motors to date. No EV motors use lithium in significant amounts.
But the numeracy nazi in me must also point out that when it comes to batteries, there is more nickel than lithium, by a considerable margin, in NMC and NCA (nickel-manganese-cobalt and nickel-cobalt-aluminum) lithium-ion batteries. There is more iron than lithium in LFP lithium batteries. And depending on construction, there may be still more copper.
1. "Earth" is a now-obsolete term for "ore". These metals are not rare, but they spread themselves around, so economically minable ore bodies tend to be hard to find. The metals are not rare, but their earths are.
> I think Tesla's lunch will be eaten by BYD, either alone or together with other Chinese EV manufacturers, in part because Tesla has been resting on its laurels for so long (still selling the model S!);
The tech and featues in a Tesla are far beyond what BYD is even close to delivering.
BYD's growth has been nothing close to Tesla's
Tesla has around four times the net income of BYD despite BYD selling three times as many cars
Telsa is making industry defining changes to manufacturing that BYD hasn't even started on
Telsa is deploying more than double the battery capacity as BYD
Tesla is far more vertically integrated than BYD
Not sure how any of this is resting on laurels or at all a sign that BYD is at risk of being a threat
Rare-earth-less high energy magnets have been the subject of research at the lab level for a while, funded at the university level by ARPA-E and elsewhere but which have never been commercialized. It is actually cutting edge work.
Iron nitride magnets are probably the most likely candidate, and they can actually have higher energy than rare earth magnets, and have particularly good high temperature coercivity compared to Neodymium based magnets, although not quite as high coercivity at room temperatures (but high temperature may be the limiting factor in existing motors).
So I don’t understand where this sad sack negativity comes from, because it most certainly doesn’t come from knowledge in the field. There are materials science improvements over time, and this is one such area. There can be a net improvement, not just a pure trade-off. Niron Magnetics is one such company trying to commercialize the material, and you can go to their location in Minneapolis and play with their iron nitride magnets if you like.
Tesla did use high energy cylindrical li-ion cells in their cars before others. Sometimes things improve, through the hard work of researchers.
As far as I can tell, no. It’s mostly a lab level endeavor, funded by federal grants (with the purpose of reducing US dependence on Chinese mineral supply chain).
Its not that they have some novel idea - its that they're committing to that idea at a corporate level on a massive scale. It's essentially giving us all our best shot at achieving said results. Tesla thinks they've laid out the bridges necessary to get there, and they're publicly making a claim so they can be held accountable. That is why it's a big deal.
Manganese-based permanent magnets seem to be a recent development in the research literature, could that be the technology employed here?
> "Manganese-based permanent magnetic materials have become an area of significant research activity in recent years as a potential alternative to permanent magnets based on Rare Earth (RE) metals. Manganese compounds are capable of achieving a relatively high energy product, BH, when processed to have a strong texture. Research has identified three promising compounds for Mn-based permanent magnets: Mn-Ga, Mn-Bi, and Mn-Al. While calculations show that these compounds cannot achieve the theoretical maximum energy products, (BH)max, of RE magnets, current research suggests than they can fill the property gap between inexpensive, but low-performance, ferrites and expensive high-performance RE magnets."
"Manganese-based permanent magnet materials" (2022) T Keller, I Baker - Progress in Materials Science
Umm, Teslas do not use DC motors, I don't know where the article got that idea. I doubt they've ever used DC motors for anything more powerful than an electric seat adjuster. The Model 3 does use a permanent magnet motor, but it's an AC synchronous reluctance motor.
If you're going to make an article about electric motors in Teslas, at least make sure you get the facts about the electric motors right.
If you're going to make authoritative comments about motors, you should actually get your facts correct first.
>The Model 3 does use a permanent magnet motor, but it's an AC synchronous reluctance motor.
No, synchronous reluctance motors do not use permanent magnets on their rotors. The motors that do are called "brushless DC motors". I'm not sure what the Model 3 uses, but last time I saw a cutaway, years ago, it was using an inductance motor, which is entirely different, but maybe they switched to BLDC for efficiency gains.
Ah, yes you're correct, a reluctance motor isn't a permanent magnet motor. Although the Model 3 does in fact use a PMSM - Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor, which is an AC motor. So not all permanent magnet motors are DC.
No modern high-performance motor that needs speed control uses electric power directly from a battery or the mains: it always goes through an electronic controller of some kind, which uses transistors to generate the necessary waveforms at the required voltage. Whether the motor itself is a permanent magnet motor or an inductance motor doesn't really matter; they each have strengths and weaknesses, but they both need electronic controllers.
There are lots of ways to make motors without rare earths...
There aren't many ways to make permanent magnet motors without rare earths. The slide specifically claims this is the next generation permanent magnet motor.
So the question is... Did they invent a new magnet Chemistry... Or are they using a known magnet Chemistry and are okay with not-very-strong magnets?
> Our product roadmap climbs the ladder of performance allowing us to replace NdFeB magnets initially on the basis of price performance and ultimately on the basis of absolute performance
So it sounds like they haven't yet figured out how to make a magnet as strong as a regular NeFeB magnet, but it is theoretically possible to do so.
Magnet strength is one of the key inputs for motor torque per unit mass, and it seems unlikely Tesla would want to trade off much of either mass or torque for price.
> it seems unlikely Tesla would want to trade off much of either mass or torque for price.
Tesla routinely make this tradeoff -- e.g. the Standard Range M3 uses LFP (litium iron phosphate) batteries that are cheaper but less energy dense compared the to Long Range M3 that uses a more nickel-based lithium battery that's more performant.
If availability of, say, neodymium becomes limited, no amount of price increase would be able to bring a sufficient quantity. It's a bad situation to.find your factory in.
Ehh, Tesla just sold their 4 millionth vehicle (waited until then for investor day so they could flex), are breaking ground in Mexico shortly on their new factory, and are rapidly approaching $100B/year in revenue at a 25-30% margin (while other EV startups are teetering near death and legacies are slow to catch up). Constructive skepticism is fine, but strong evidence of their innovation capacity is available (especially around power controls and propulsion, but also structural and environment, such as their heat pumps). Elon’s a liar, but also effective. Both of these things can be true simultaneously.
I have been a huge skeptic of Tesla, but when you visit Europe the roads are FULL of Teslas, and in the US the roads are now full of them too. In Europe it's more bizarre because generally those consumers were sticking with European brands. Seeing Fords or Toyotas is very rare there, but Teslas are everywhere. That made me a believer. However, I do think the company is probably overvalued.
I think Elon Musk does a lot of very good things, but I do think he often is stupid, a liar, and at worst a useful idiot. In the end though, SpaceX, Starlink & Tesla have all been net positives for humanity. Jobs and Gates both were/are not great people, but their products and companies have been good for basically everyone, so it's not a new concept.
Where in Europe, because outside Norway Tesla's don't dominate at all. [1] They had around 15% market share and the last few months that dropped.
Maybe because in Europe you have other auto makers that make electric and non electric versions of the same car so you just assume they aren't EV? The Hyundai Kona is basically the same outside except for the front grille and no exhaust. Unless you know that, you don't really know the difference. I would say (in Portugal) on my daily drives I identify around 6/7 Evs for every Tesla. And as I said, I probably missed some as I can't distinguish them
It's possible that where you live and visit is full of Teslas, but that might not be a random sample.
But for a while, you had to get a Tesla to get a pure EV. The real question is, as competitors come online, are people likely to purchase another Tesla or try something new?
EV start-ups competing with Tesla are all struggling. It's very likely that Rivian will simply go bankrupt in the next few years. The big automakers are also struggling, largely because their best sellers are bigger vehicles, at least in the US and charging & battery tech just isn't there for those models. Look at the attempt at the EV Hummer, it's a joke.
My sample doesn't have to be random, 10 years ago I could go to a large wealthy city in Europe and only see European cars. Again, that is/was the norm. You would not see Toyotas or Fords, etc. Tesla has been made into an exception. So far the only European brand that even has an EV that can compare with Tesla's is Porche and it's 2x the price. If I'm not mistaken Tesla is now Norway's number one make, which seems like a big deal.
This could change, but I don't see it changing anytime soon given how bad some of the competition is. I was excited about the EV F150 but it too has shown they are still very far behind. Still don't think Telsa should be worth more than every major automaker combined. I'm not arguing anyone should buy their stock.
> You would not see Toyotas or Fords, etc. Tesla has been made into an exception.
I'm sorry, but this is just completely false. Both car brands are extremely popular in most parts of Europe, not sure where you've been...
Teslas are also popular, no doubt about it. They have some advantages (for example, the charging network) compared to others, we'll see how long it will last. As opposed to the US, the main EU high-speed charging network competitor (called Ionity) is actually getting close to full coverage in most EU countries (except for Greece, for some reason), and is of similar quality, albeit a bit more expensive.
> I'm sorry, but this is just completely false. Both car brands are extremely popular in most parts of Europe
Extremely popular? I don't think so. 7% of market share is not "extremely popular." I've been in most every country in Europe and barely ever see any Fords, Chevys or Toyotas. Maybe some commercial vehicles for Ford, but rarely a car/SUV/truck. Most every car is a European brand or a sub-brand. Tesla doesn't have much share but is already at around 2%, however Tesla's Model Y was the top selling model in Europe last year. When I go to Europe now it's hard not to spot them because they make up such a significant portion of new car sales there. The most popular Ford (Kuga) was outsold ~6x by the Model Y, the most popular Toyota (Yaris) was outside ~2x by the Model Y. That's pretty significant given Ford and Toyota have been in Europe for a long time. Maybe you're conflating the UK with the rest of Europe, where Ford is more popular, I'm mostly referring to the mainland.
It has the highest EV penetration in the world. Nearly every single new car sold is an EV. It's therefore a great indicator about how various EVs will fare on a greater scale, perhaps.
Perhaps. The USA EV market outpaces Norway by a pretty large margin, and Tesla leads the US EV market in a similar way to Norway, I guess it depends on what data point is being looked for specifically. Relatively speaking Norway is a pretty tiny market to make large scale indications off of.
Norway started buying EVs when Tesla was the only game in town. Of course they have a lot of Teslas. It seems like a bad idea to expect that experience to generalize now that there are more options.
Norway is extremely wealthy. This undoubtedly skews the results by a lot. It's a bit like extrapolating that the next big consumer car-brand is Ferrari based on your trip to Monaco.
I mean this as politely as possible: no one cares what a few people in the HN bubble think.
Units sold are units sold, and the total global addressable market for EVs is substantial (60-80 million units/pa, depending on bucketing).
I too have personal opinions, but crucially, one should not extrapolate them out to entire markets without a rigorous examination of observations and data. Put your ear to the ground, otherwise you’ll get trampled.
N=2. I love my model 3 but doubt I will ever buy another Tesla branded device. I’m currently speccing solar with batteries for my house, and I’ve taken Tesla off the table.
They make good gear but I don’t want to put another dollar in that guy’s pocket.
I love how Tesla fans are so quick to applaud how much money Tesla is making from them. It seems most of "the mission" is (re-) building Musk's wealth.
> such as their heat pumps
The heat pumps that have been a problematic nightmare?
Money pays the bills. It’s why Tesla is successful and automakers who tried to sell econobox EVs couldn’t. Build sexy cars people with purchasing power will buy, and younger consumers aspire to. Pour that into fast DC chargers and rapidly expanding global manufacturing capacity. Profit. You cannot will these things into existence, they require capital (investment, revenue, whatever).
No one ever said Katy Perry had the Bolt or Nissan leaf of tour stages. I recommend some brand equity reading, as well as behavioral economics around the psychology of auto purchases (lots of emotion, brand loyalty, etc).
At this point "Tesla says it will do..." is virtually without meaning. Historically this means either they will never do it, or they are catching up to the industry, or it's something their supplier already does for everyone.
Is it? Or is that just hyperbole? I mean, they announced every product they do deliver too, and they're selling a lot of objectively very successful products.
I just don't understand the hate around this company. It's not enough to criticize, people need to deploy stuff like "virtually without meaning", or "will never do it". I mean, can't they just be like any other company that spins a bit with their product announcements?
In this specific case, though, the criticism is just silly. Tesla already deploys induction motors on half the drive train that meet this requirement. The question is whether they can get rid of the (higher power/weight) permanent magnet motors in the back.
Musk has said that one of his companies will give paraplegics the ability to walk again. He's overstated and overhyped the autonomous driving capabilities a million times as well.
I do not hate Tesla. It's just a plain fact that their announcements don't carry information. They might do it, or they might not, and the press release gives us no additional reason to believe either way.
But the specific form of this announcement is industry catch-up. Other makes already ship zero-rare-earth motors to the mass market, and Tesla did itself in the past.
You literally suggested that they will never ship a product they are shipping today, though. Maybe you would like to reword?
Again, I just don't understand the discourse. By the same standards you are using one should never trust criticism of Tesla because it's likely to be phrased as ridiculous cherry-picked hyperbole (e.g. "some other company the guy owns is a moonshot brain thing ergo century-old motor technology will never happen" -- also in this subthread).
> But the specific form of this announcement is industry catch-up.
FWIW, this is just factually incorrect. Tesla has been shipping induction motors since the original Model S. They quite clearly led the EV industry in this particular technology. It wasn't until the Model 3 launched that they shipped their first permanent magnet drive train.
I was interested in buying model Y. Rented a 2022. Wipers came on at dawn with 0 rain/snow. The next day wipers were not coming on during a snow storm.
Quick search showed that this is a common complaint among owners.
"Normal" car has wiper settings in the stalk. I don't want to crash trying to change wiper settings in the rain.
I mean, most Tesla engineering hires are thankfully smarter than their management - not that they don't have some great competition out there though (Merc, Porsche, etc.)
I think a lot of this stuff boils down to Elon Musk being absolutely ruthlessly uncompromising in his hiring and technology vision and management.
His management style may not be agreeable to people and he gets criticized for that a lot obviously. But the technical vision that he drives at Tesla, SpaceX, and his other companies are undeniable what makes these companies so valuable.
And it's exactly where his competitor's performance is less than stellar. Particularly at the companies you mention.
Do you mean Twitter? Not his finest moment in terms of management style, I agree. But in terms of taking that absolute train wreck of a company and turning it around from being deeply unprofitable (literally burning billions) to where it at least stands a chance of surviving as a company with a realistic shot of being profitable in the space of a few months is maybe something Elon Musk doesn't get a lot of credit for. Was it ugly? Unorthodox? Obnoxious? Yes to all of that and then some. But maybe not as ugly as a full blown bankruptcy would have been. And also effective even maybe.
Tesla actually used 3-phase motors in the past. Their newer motor (not the one in the article) is not a 3-phase induction, but is ~2% more efficient which is important when considering overall vehicle cost/range.
The image from Tesla says "lower cost and higher efficiency drive units using zero rare earths". The "higher efficiency" to me implies that it probably won't be significantly heavier if at all.
Sounds like they are on track, FSD beta is in my car right now, semi is hauling cargo today, and cybertruck pre production units are on the streets. The robot is not initially intended to be on store shelves but used inside Tesla factories, still might be a year or two before it's doing useful work
If successful, this contributes towards the reduction of national security risk around rare earth supplies and supply chain located in a possibly unfriendly nation state (major deposits are in Russia and China) and also means you don’t have to establish rare earth mines or supply chains in your own countries (capital and environmental concerns). It’s a big deal!
Also, just as newer battery chemistries moved away from cobalt (a conflict mineral), this too is progress in countering arguments against EVs due to their material sourcing.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”