EV Motors Without Rare Earth Permanent Magnets

The article doesn't say explicitly these are high performance non rare earth magnets.

Niron uses synthetic tetrataenite (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrataenite) which is a fascinating material. Until a recent 2021 discovery it was believed that you could make it easily, but you'd need to let it cool slowly around 30,000 years! Only a few kg existed on earth from meteors.

But iron nitride Fe3N would also be a similarly good and less exotic choice.

https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/iron-nitrides-powerful-magne...

Let's kill a couple myths here.

EVs and wind turbines aren't the main application of neodymium; industrial motors are. Even into 2050, the forecast is that wind and EV rare earth usage will be 25% of the market. A hybrid contains about 2lb of neodymium magnets.

They're not rare; the name doesn't refer to their scarcity. Neodymium is as common as copper, and it's very well distributed around the planet.

Materials used in batteries and magnets do not generate much additional mining because a number of them are left over from extraction of other ores like iron and aluminum.

These materials are highly recyclable. neodymium isn't recycled because it wasn't economically feasible due to the low cost of neodymium. As demand goes up (and the supply of old neodymium magnets goes up), recycling will become more economically attractive.

All this fuss about the mining impacts of materials for batteries and magnets is silly - it's just concern-trolling by the fossil-fuel industry. Nobody was talking about the impact of rare earth mining when 75%+ of it was going into industrial PM motors when there was a revolution in industrial motor design, moving away from

Please stop complaining about the "environmental damage of mining for them fancy rare-earth metals in yer prius", especially if you don't care about the environmental damage of putting 30 gallons of gas your truck every couple of days. Or the environmental damage of all the steel and aluminum ore that was mined for you to buy a new 5,000lb truck every few years.

If you drive a truck that takes 30 gallons of gas every few days - and you can't change that because you NEED the capability of that truck (as opposed to just dick compensating) - then you should be celebrating every time you see a friend, neighbor, coworker, etc buying a hybrid or EV. They're helping reduce emissions overall, offsetting some of your emissions - as well as helping drive R&D and economy of scale. They're helping you get closer to

The very least you can do is not mock them, install "coal rolling" mods, damage their cars, purposefully block or damage charging stations, write comments online about how stupid they are in comments trying to "GOTCHA!" people advocating for greater adoption, etc.

I believe earlier Tesla's used induction motors - which don't tend to have any permanent magnets. The advantage of permanent magnets is pretty small - maybe a couple of percent efficiency. They weigh less, but motor weight is hardly dominant in EVs anyway.

The only real resource usage concern for EVs remains the batteries.

So, first lithium batteries without cobalt, and now motors without rare-earth metals.

The end of combustion engines and hydrogen fuel cells is coming to an end, no matter what the fossil fuel lobby and the politicians they bought off try to propagandize.