Few announcements from Tesla at Investors Day this March 1, 2023, but the confirmation of a new permanent magnet motor containing no rare earth.
For those who were impatient to discover the long-awaited announcements during Tesla’s Investors Day on March 1, and who would not have had the courage to go to the end of the more than two hours of conference, no worries: there is no there wasn’t much to get your teeth into.
In reality, he said a lot of things as interesting as they were indigestible, but nothing that we expected on the next models, in particular the one already called the Model 2, or even on the Hardware 4.
However, here and there, there were a few announcements to be seized on the leap. As with the arrival of Superchargers V4. Or on the “next generation platform” and the desire to stop rare earths.
Return to Teslas without rare earths
Tesla has indeed shown in one of his slides a new permanent magnet electric motor, which does not contain any rare earth element. The American firm explained that it had already reduced the use of rare earths in the production of its cars by a quarter between 2017 and 2022, but it simply wants to eradicate them.
However, Tesla has not always used rare earths in its vehicles since if we find them in DC permanent magnet motors, there are already none in its AC induction motors. And these were used in the first Tesla vehicles, the Model S and Model X, before the arrival of the Model 3 changed that. And that finally, the whole of the range does not return to the rare earths.
By stopping rare earths, Tesla would lower production costs, but at the same time increase the efficiency of its engines.
For the moment, we don’t know much more about the future electric motor without rare earths, or even what will be the first models to take advantage of it. But eventually, the whole range will benefit since Tesla wants to stop them altogether.
Materials pointed out
It is generally much more in the motors of electric vehicles that we find the rare earths, more than in the batteries, contrary to what we often hear. The latter do not use any rare earth.
Neodymium is one of them. By “rare earths”, we mean elements that are designated as such in the periodic table of elements. And not lithium or cobalt as we hear too often, although they are critical materials. Moreover, lithium-ion batteries do not contain rare earths.
As a reminder, rare earths are particularly singled out and represent in particular the workhorse of anti-EVs. And indeed they generate many problems, in particular with regard to their extraction, or their supply. But remember that thermal and hybrid cars are not exempt from rare earths, with the catalytic converters which contain them.
To follow us, we invite you to download our Android and iOS application. You can read our articles, files, and watch our latest YouTube videos.