Tesla Motors May Consider Replacing Rare Earth Magnets With Low-performance Ferrites

Due to supply chain issues and environmental concerns, Tesla's powertrain division is working to remove rare earth magnets from electric motors, and Looking for alternatives.

 

Tesla has not yet invented an entirely new magnet material, so it may use existing technology for a while, most likely to use Cheap and easy to manufacture ferrites.

 

By carefully positioning ferrite magnets and adjusting other aspects of motor design, many of the properties of rare earth-driven motors can be replicated Index. In this case, the weight of the motor has only increased by about 30%, which is this relative to the overall weight of the car

The difference may be small.

The new magnet material needs to have the following three basic characteristics: 1) it needs to be magnetic: 2) it continues to be magnetic in the presence of other magnetic fields; 3) Can withstand high temperature.

 

Tencent Technology News news, electric car manufacturer Tesla said that its car motors will no longer use rare earth elements, which means Engineers who taste Tesla will have to unleash their creativity to find alternatives.

 

Last month, at Tesla's Investor Day event, Elon Musk released "Master Plan Part III." Among them, there is A small detail caused a stir in the field of physics. Colin Campbell, an executive in Tesla's powertrain division, announced that his team is working on Removing rare earth magnets from motors is due to supply chain issues and excessive negative impact from the production of rare earth magnets.

To achieve this, Campbell presented two slides involving three mysterious materials that were cleverly labeled For rare earth 1, rare earth 2 and rare earth 3. The first slide represents the current state of Tesla, which uses anywhere from half a kilogram to 10 grams in each vehicle. On the second slide, the number of rare earth elements used drops to zero.

 

For magnetists who study the magical power of certain materials due to the movement of electrons, the identity of rare earth 1 is easy to identify, That is neodymium. When added to common elements such as iron and boron, this metal can help create a strong, always-on magnetic field. But few materials have this quality, producing Tesla cars that are large enough to move more than 2,000 kilogram scars, and the magnetic fields of many other things from industrial robots to fighter jets, have fewer rare earth elements. If Tesla counts

To remove neodymium and other rare earth elements from the motor, which magnet will it use instead?

 

One thing is certain for physicists: Tesla didn't invent an entirely new magnet material. Andy Blackburn, executive vice president of strategy at NIron Magnetics, said: "In more than 100 years, we may only have a few opportunities to get new commercial magnets." NIronMagnetics is one of the few startups trying to seize the next opportunity.

 

Blackburn and others believe it's more likely that Tesla has decided to use a much less powerful magnet Will be it. Among the many possibilities, the most obvious candidate is ferrite: a ceramic composed of iron and oxygen, with A small amount of metal, such as strontium, is mixed. It is cheap and easy to manufacture around the world since the 50s of the 20th century

Refrigerator doors are manufactured in this way.

 

But by volume, ferrites are only one-tenth the magnetism of neodymium magnets, which raises new questions. Tesla first Executive Elon Musk has always been known for being uncompromising, but if Tesla is going to switch to ferrite, it seems that it must make something

Some concessions. It's easy to think that batteries are the power of electric cars, but it's actually electromagnetism that drives electric cars. It is no coincidence that both the Tesla company and the magnetic unit "Tesla" are named after the same person. When electrons flow through the wires in the motor When turning, they generate an electromagnetic field that pushes the opposite magnetic force, causing the shaft of the motor to drive the wheels to spin.

For the rear wheels of Tesla vehicles, these forces are provided by an electric motor with a permanent magnet, which is a type of motor that has A strange material that stabilizes a magnetic field without any current input, thanks to the ingenious spin of electrons around atoms. Special Sla only started adding these magnets to cars about five years ago to extend battery life without upgrading the battery Range and increased torque. Prior to this, the company used induction motors manufactured around electromagnets, through which electromagnets passed

Magnetism is generated by consuming electricity. Those models with a front-mounted motor are still using this model today.

 

Tesla's move to abandon rare earths and magnets may seem a bit strange. Car companies are often obsessed with dry efficiency, especially In the case of electric vehicles, they are still struggling to convince drivers to overcome their fear of range. But with car manufacturers

Expanding the production of electric vehicles is beginning, and many projects that were previously considered too inefficient are re-emerging.

 

This has prompted automakers, including Tesla, to produce more cars that use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. With those Batteries containing elements such as cobalt and nickel tend to have a shorter range than batteries. This is an older technology,

Greater weight and lower storage capacity. The current Model 3, powered by low-speed power, has a range of 272 miles (approximately 438 km), while the long-range Model S with more advanced batteries can reach 400 miles (640 km). But adopting lithium iron phosphate batteries may be a wiser commercial choice, as it avoids the use of more expensive or even existential ones Material of political risk.

 

It's unlikely Tesla will simply replace magnets, like ferrites, with something worse, though, and nothing else Change. Uppsala University physicist Alena Vishna said: "You will carry a huge piece of magnetism in a car Iron. "Fortunately, motors are quite complex machines, made up of a lot of other parts that could theoretically be rearranged column to mitigate the impact of using weaker magnets.

 

In a computer model, materials company Proterial recently determined, by carefully positioning the ferrite magnet and adjusting the motor set In other aspects, many performance indicators of rare earth drive motors can be replicated. In this case, the weight of the motor only With an increase of around 30%, the difference may be small relative to the overall weight of the car.

 

Despite these headaches, car companies have plenty of reasons to abandon rare earth elements, but only if they do If you can do it. The value of the entire rare earth market is about the same as the American egg market, and in theory, rare earth yuan Primes can be mined, processed and converted to magnetism around the world iron, but in fact there are many challenges to these processes.

 

Thomas Krummer, a mineral analyst and popular rare earth watch blogger, said: "That's a $10 billion deal But the value of products created annually is between $2 trillion and $3 trillion, which is a huge lever. Car It's also true that even if they only contain a few kilograms of this substance, removing them means that cars can no longer do so Drive, unless you're willing to redesign the entire engine. ”。

 

The United States and Europe are trying to diversify this supply chain. California rare earth mines, which were closed in the early 21st century, have recently reopened

Former supply of 15% of the world's rare earths. In the United States, government agencies, especially the Department of Defense, need equipment such as aircraft and satellites

Providing powerful magnets, they are keen to invest in supply chains both domestically and in regions such as Japan and Europe. But considering the success This is a slow process that takes years or even decades. At the same time, the demand for embedding magnets in decarbonization tools such as cars and wind turbines is also on the rise.

According to market research institute AdamasIntelligence, 12% of rare earths are currently used in electric vehicles, which is a fledgling market. At the same time, rare earth prices often fluctuate wildly, and external companies often cannot predict these factors

Plain.

 

Jim Chelikowski, a physicist who studies magnetic materials at the University of Texas at Austin, said that in summary, If you are in an industry where alternative products can be found, that could be extraordinary. But he said the search was better than ferrite There are a variety of reasons for better alternatives to rare earth magnets. The challenge is to find a material with three basic characteristics: 1) it needs to be magnetic; 2) it continues to be magnetic in the presence of other magnetic fields; and 3) it can withstand high temperatures. Thermal magnets are no longer magnets.

 

Researchers know very well which chemical elements make good magnets, but there are millions of potential atomic arrangements Seed. Some so-called magnet hunters take the approach of starting with hundreds of thousands of possible materials and weeding out those that contain rare earths and then use machine learning to predict the magnetic properties of the remaining material. At the end of last year, Chelikows Key et al. used the system to create a new highly magnetic material containing cobalt.Often the biggest challenge is finding new magnets that are easy to manufacture. Vicina of Uppsala University explained that some newly developed magnets, such as those containing manganese, are promising but unstable. In other cases, scientists know that a material is extremely magnetic, but it can't be mass-made. These include tetragonite, a nickel-iron compound found only from meteorites that must undergo thousands of years of slow cooling to precisely arrange its atoms to the right state. In the lab, efforts to move the process forward faster are ongoing, but not yet bearing fruit.

 

Magnet startup Niron: Copy all and search for some. The company says it produces ferric nitride magnets theoretically compared to Neodymium is more magnetic. But it is also a volatile material that is difficult to manufacture and preserve in the desired form. Blackburn said the company is making progress but can't produce magnets powerful enough for Tesla's next generation of cars. The first step, he says, is to put the new magnet into smaller devices like sound systems.

 

Thomas Krummer, a mining analyst and popular rare earth watch blogger, said it was unclear whether other automakers would follow Tesla's move to abandon rare earths. Some companies may insist on making the national credentials move carefully while another

Copy Select all and search for some companies will use the induction to move Yunshan Zhoukou things. Even Tesla could use a few grams of rare earths on future cars, scattered across places like automatic windows, power steering and windshield wipers.

 

At Tesla's Investor Day event, the slide comparing rare earth content was actually comparing an entire current generation car to an entire current generation car Future motors were compared, which could be a publicity stunt. Workarounds like Tesla are in development, Replacing rare earth materials in motors may be a good thing, but as Krummer says, "I'm afraid we don't have enough time."

 

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