Foreverconservative said:
Someone cited Elon Musk earlier in the discussion. Musk is the benchmark in the EV world. He's so far ahead of the rest it's not even close. Earlier this year, Musk announced that Tesla would ditch rare earth metals such as neodymium in its motors by some unspecified date, citing supply chain issues, impossible sustainability long term, and overall toxicity of sourcing them. So called experts are exploring how Tesla will pull off this engineering feat, and one thing will be certain that if Tesla makes this move it'll require some performance trade offs. So all the warm and fuzzies people are getting over the crazy acceleration numbers and the power/torque ratio to compete against the ICE trucks is going to suffer. Ferrite magnets, isTesla's most likely alternative to rare earth magnets, and even they come with their own potential environmental issues, and another option, tetrataenite, however it's still years away from being viable. But then there's neodymium which is the most prevalent EV motors, also they use dysprosium and terbium All these rare earth metals are not in endless supply and they rape the land to get to them, not to mention the little children labor used to mine the stuff. And that's just one hurdle, then there's the absolute fact that there's not enough lithium and cobalt on this planet to sustain the battery demands these green new dreamers think they can do away with ICEs. It's never going to happen. Sure they are developing a recycling system but that only prolongs the end when the supply runs out, because the recycle factor is not 1:1, so there's still an atritian factor. Musk has warned repeatedly that the greenies goals of doing completely away with ICE's is nonsensical.
Without a doubt, dropping the non rare earth metals will drop 0-60 times. Tesla started using REE motors in 2017 when they introduced Ludicrous mode. I think they will keep the REE motors in their highest performance S and X models but they don't sell many of those compared to the 3 and S.
"Tesla's early vehicles including the original Model S and X used an induction motor, where a copper or aluminum cage is used on the rotor (the rotating part of the motor). With the release of the Model 3 in 2017, it adopted the use of a permanent magnet (PM) motor where strong magnets are used to generate a magnetic field on the rotor. Whilst it retained an induction motor for its secondary drive unit (providing boosts of acceleration when needed), the switch to a PM design enabled greater efficiency and power density."
Their plan is to go with PMs still as you cite but it appears to be ferrite based magnets. The key is technology not using REE already exists and has been used before and is used by some car companies today (but not Tesla)
https://www.idtechex.com/en/research-article/how-can-tesla-shift-away-from-rare-earths/28820#:~:text=At%20Tesla's%20Investor%20Day,and%20sustainability%20of%20electric%20motors.As for cobalt and nickel in the batteries, again for the lower performance cars, they have already made the switch away from those materials.
"Nearly half of all Tesla vehicles made in the first quarter of 2022 were equipped with a lithium iron phosphate battery containing no nickel or cobalt as part of a move to cut reliance on metals with supply or environmental issues."
https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/latest-news-headlines/tesla-s-options-for-making-motors-without-rare-earths-could-be-limited-74693695I agree there won't be enough lithium to switch to all electric as some want to do and there are too many applications where EVs don't work at least based on current and planned technology. I don't agree there isn't enough lithium that could be developed. Look at the new reserves found in the western US as an example. Historically, there wasn't a lot of prospecting going on for lithium because there was plenty of supply. The issue is developing all these reserves and refining the material will take decades to reach what an all EV fleet would require. Don't forget, the then world's leading geologist said we would run out of oil in 30 years. This was said in 1886. I think it is safe to now say he was wrong as have all the subsequent predictors over the last 137 years.