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Tesla's recent announcement during investor day suggests they may be about to break the electric motor industry with a new permanent magnet motor design the
smaller lighter cheaper and more efficient than what they use today all without having
any rare earth metals this breakthrough will mean a dramatic reduction in price for all future Tesla
models and it could also mean less dependency on China for raw materials but neodymium and other
rare earth metals are the strongest magnets you can buy right is there something groundbreaking
a foot or is Tesla just shooting for the stars to boost their stock price let's find out I'm
Ricky and this is tube at DaVinci new electric motors and battery technologies are the basis
of modern electric vehicles without the high energy and power densities of new batteries
like lithium ion batteries lithium iron phosphate and other chemistries we've covered before on this
channel batteries just simply would be too heavy and bulky for EVS to carry around in fact the
maximum energy density of lithium ion batteries has increased over 20 times since 2008 when back
when it was a meager 55 watt hours per liter compared to the record holder today which is
amperous Tech's 1150 watt hour per liter slash 450 Watt hours per kilogram battery which they
recently shipped to a company building Next Generation high altitude pseudo satellites or
Cutting Edge stratospheric platforms which kind of reminds me of the Chinese balloon video we
made links in description a 20-fold increase in energy density means that batteries are now 20
times smaller than in 2008 for the same amount of stored energy but an equally important part of the
EV equation is the electric motor that converts the energy stored in those batteries into motion
an ideal motor for an EV needs lots of torque so it can accelerate quickly it needs to be powerful
enough and able to withstand high RPMs to move a heavy car at a wide range of speeds it also needs
to be lightweight and small it needs to be cheap so it doesn't drive the cost of the entire vehicle
up and it should also be easy to manufacture and finally it should be made of easily accessible
materials the first three conditions Define the performance of the motor and are met by
having good power and torque densities and all six conditions depend heavily on the particular design
of the motor and that's we're going to focus on today to understand that better let's look
at how electric motors work from a general point of view all electric motors work in much the same
way you have two main components to an electric motor the stator which is the parts of the motor
that stays fixed or static hence the name and the rotor which as you probably already guessed is a
part that spins or rotates the stator creates an electromagnetic field by passing a current
through a series of Loops or copper windings and that magnetic field pushes on a second magnetic
field coming from the rotor pushing and pulling on it and making it spin the main aspect of the
motor that changes from One Design to another are how the rotors generate its magnetic field
either through permanent magnets through copper coils or through induced currents in a conductor
and the type of current AC or DC used to generate the electromagnetic fields Tesla hasn't only been
at the Forefront of new battery Tech with their 4680 cells that are among the best in its class
but the company is also spearheading an electric motor industry with new permanent magnet motor
designs powered by a new type of powerful magnet that doesn't use rare earth metals like neodymium
dysprosium or terbium now when I saw this at investor day it really caught my attention I
mean we've grown so accustomed to considering neodymium magnets as the be-all end-all when
it comes to powerful permanent magnets that so much is questioning them as the industry
standard seemed counter-intuitive so let's take a look at what Tesla has been up to Tesla has been
innovating the EV industry since day one and that meant revolutionizing everything from the
entire manufacturing process to each individual component starting with the motor it's pretty
amazing how quickly some of these Technologies are advancing especially in areas like Ai and Robotics
where Tesla is investing heavily and that's a great segue to our sponsor this week ecovax is
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ecovax debot T10 Omni do the cleaning for you links in the description huge thanks to ecovax
and you for supporting the show the first Tesla ever made back in 2008 the Tesla Roadster sported
a 185 kilowatt AC induction motor the induction motor was invented by Serbian American inventor
Nikola Tesla back in 1887 which is how the company originally got its name in fact did you know that
the Tesla logo is actually a cross section of the electric induction motor Nikola Tesla invented
Elon Musk confirmed it himself on a tweet a few years ago AC induction motors have some things
going for them they're very efficient which means they're good at converting the energy coming from
the battery pack into mechanical energy or motion they provide high torque at low speeds and they're
relatively inexpensive while AC induction Motors are a popular choice for electric vehicles they
do have some disadvantages compared to other types of Motors some of the cons include lower
efficiency at low speeds lower acceleration than other options because of lower torque overall and
they're also slightly noisier and tend to cause more vibrations in the car Tesla has moved on
from the induction motor to use permanent magnetic AC Motors or pmax pmax work similarly to standard
AC Motors but the only difference being that the magnetic field from the rotor isn't induced by the
stator but rather generated by a permanent magnet embedded near the surface of the rotor the cool
thing about these motors is that if you use really strong magnets you can make really strong Motors
but the problem was that strong magnets used to be very big it wasn't until strong neodymium
magnets were developed back in 1982 that we could make pmax smaller and their power density started
to increase significantly enough to make them useful for Ev applications as this following
chart shows so what makes these permanent magnet AC Motors great the main perk is that they have
a very high power density which means that they can produce more power in a smaller and lighter
package this makes them obviously ideal for use in EVS where weight and size are critical factors
they're more efficient than AC induction Motors as well especially at low speeds which means you can
get more range out of your car for the same charge while they do have less torque at low speeds than
induction Motors they have higher torque at high speeds which is more important for maintaining
high speeds and cruising the problem with these types of Motors is that they have lower torque
at low speed making them accelerate slower so it takes longer to go from 0 to 60. the second big
problem is that they need strong magnets and until today that has meant rare earth magnets
like neodymium iron Boron magnets these magnets represent a problem for two reasons rare Earths
are expensive most of the rare Earths today are mined and processed in China this makes
high power density pmax like the ones needed for EVS expensive and their supply chains dependent
on geopolitical conditions and the relationships between China and the US which are somewhat in a
delicate spot right now to say the least today Tesla designs cars that get the Best of Both
Worlds by combining induction and permanent magnet Motors on their drivetrains the Tesla Model 3 and
Y sport AC permanent magnet synchronous motors for the rear wheels and AC induction motors for
the front this lets them get better performance both at low and high speeds in the case of the
Tesla Model S the original model had a three-phase 4-pole AC induction motor in 2019 it switched to
the Raven powertrain which used permanent magnet reluctance motors from the Tesla Model 3 and now
uses the AC permanent magnet synchronous motor just like Tesla Model X this clearly shows that
Tesla's bedding for permanent magnet AC Motors despite their downsides the reason it seems is
because they have a new AC motor design that'll cut down costs so significantly that the entire
drivetrain will only cost about a thousand dollars and the new generation platforms and they're
doing this by getting rid of rare earth metals changing the state of design and simplifying the
manufacturing process at investor day Colin Campbell in charge of Powertrain mentioned
how the company managed to reduce the weight of the powertrain by 20 using 25 percent less
earth materials and making the powertrain Factory 75 smaller and 65 percent cheaper
to build between 2017 and 2022. now for the next Generation Motors they're going big or going home
by completely avoiding rare earth magnets all together this image from the investor Day event
shows the underside of a stator from a 2022 model 3 drivetrain with a typical round welds that close
the loop circuits regardless of the new stator design induction Motors aren't how Tesla plans
get rid of rare earth because Colin Campbell specifically stated that the Next Generation
motor would be a permanent magnet motor so what does this mean well there's basically
two options either Tesla is reverting back to a bigger less power dense magnet like the ones used
in speakers or they found a new magnetic material that can produce at scale that's as good or better
than neodymium magnets but without the rare earth metals the first scenario is plausible they could
afford to put a larger magnet by making the rest of the motor lighter and smaller we do something
Tesla has been accomplishing successfully for the past few years this decision could make it easy to
scale production to 20 million EVS as they plan to do but I don't think this is the case I mean it's
not like Tesla to go for lower quality just for the sake of cost in fact almost all the speakers
at the investor did pointed out how the company's vertical integration allowed them to lower costs
while also improving the performance of the end product so I think what really happened was that
Tesla found a clear path to Source a new type of magnet that's as good or better than rare earth
magnets but without the rare earth materials as it turns out that material already exists
and we've known about it for decades I'm talking about a special type of iron compound called iron
nitride iron nitride magnets are made of only two elements iron and nitrogen iron is the fourth most
abundant element in the Earth's crust making up about five percent of it but it makes up around
80 to 85 percent of the the entire Earth's mass so we won't be running out of iron anytime soon
nitrogen on the other hand is the most abundant element in the atmosphere making up about 78 of
the air we breathe so if we can make magnets out of these two elements we'll have nearly
endless supplies of powerful magnets for all applications so the question really then is
how good a magnet Could you actually make with iron nitride and how does compare it with the
traditional neodymium magnet well the strength of a permanent magnet is measured through something
called the maximum energy product or HB Max this quantity is a measure of the maximum amount of
magnetic energy that can be stored in a magnet per unit volume a typical ferrite magnet those
black ceramic magnets like the ones that we've seen on refrigerators have an energy product of
about 8 to 45 kilojoules per meter cubed with the best of them reaching about 80 kilojoules
per meter cubed in contrast high grade neodymium magnets labeled n52 have a maximum energy product
of 400 to 422 kilojoules per meter cubed that's over 10 times higher than the typical ferrite
magnet but iron nitride magnets go way beyond that with a theoretical maximum energy product
of over 1 000 kilojoules per meter cubed this is almost three times higher than the best neodymium
magnet today this means that we could make magnets two and a half times smaller but with the same
magnetic force not only that but iron nitride has a density of 6.35 grams per centimeter cubed while
the typical neodymium magnet has a density of 7.6 grams per centimeter cubed which means that not
only is the size much smaller but the mass will be even lower still additionally some
reports state that the material's magnetization can withstand higher temperatures with the Curie
temperature of around 1300 Kelvin whereas for neodymium magnets The Cure temperature barely
reaches half as much so our nitride makes stronger lighter and smaller magnets that
can withstand higher temperatures with without demagnetizing so you're probably thinking this
recent discovery is going to change everything but in fact it's not so recent at all in fact it
was discovered back in 1951 over 70 years ago so natural question then is why the heck aren't we
using iron nitride magnets on everything well the answer is that it's very hard to make this stuff
especially at scale the specific compound we need to make has a formula fe16 and two but getting the
formula right is only part of the equation these compounds have to form a specific magnetic phase
it's kind of like tempering steel you can have all the components in the right amounts but you
have to apply a very special treatment to get this deal you want well the same applies for
iron nitride however some researchers at the University of Minnesota apparently cracked the
code they started a spin-off company called niron magnetics to commercialize their technology and
I have to say it looks pretty promising the company is developing what they have called
clean Earth magnets based on iron nitride this technology enables the mass production of high
performance permanent magnets using low-cost and sustainable input materials according to
the company their magnets are 15 to 30 percent stronger than neodymium they perform better as
temperatures rise and don't contain any rare earth materials and they claim that they have
figured out how to produce the material at scale Dusty green our producer actually heard about
niron magnetics a few months ago and thought it might be worth checking out to see if what
their claim on their website was actually true it turned out that Nara was very secretive and
keeping pretty hush-hush about their development stage but he confirmed they are building a large
manufacturing facility across the street from their headquarters the research team behind neuron
magnetics has published 23 research papers on iron nitrize magnetic properties and synthesis since
2009 so technology is based on over a decade of research and development conducted by their team
of scientists and Engineers which includes a whole lot of phds they also have 30 patents granted and
20 more pending approval and neuron magnetic secured a 17 and a half million dollar scale-up
Grant from the US Department of Energy's Advanced research projects agency and the National Science
Foundation which suggests that their commercial technology has undergone some level of third-party
validation all this suggests that neuron magnetics is the real deal and the fact that
they are building a production facility is more encouraging but what's more interesting is that
for me the physics check out remember I mentioned that the theoretical strength of these magnets
was almost three times as high as neodymium so achieving a 30 increase seems more than doable
this means that the clean energy magnets from neuron magnetics could be the first of a whole
new family of permanent clean magnets that can make electric motors smaller and more powerful
than ever before picture a standard skateboard with little Motors on each wheel that could keep
you going without moving a muscle or an e-bike that's almost indistinguishable from a regular one
because the motor is the size of a gear cassette and the best part of all is cost high-grade new
magnets are super expensive as you can imagine because neodymium costs almost 200 per kilogram
the strotium costs 600 and terbium 800 per kilogram whereas iron costs less than a dollar per
kilogram of course there will be high production costs because the iron nitride is hard to make
but neuron claims that their magnets will still be 50 cheaper than neodymium so all in all it seems
like this is exactly the kind of technology that Tesla would be investing in Tesla has made huge
strides with batteries we haven't heard as much about Motors but here it is this is a huge win
from an environmental standpoint performance cost and complexity simpler Supply chains and
all the rest exactly the sort of thing that Tesla should be investing in for their next generation
of products so what do you guys think did I miss something do you have any other insights that we
might have overlooked start off in the comments below and until next week check out this video
which we think you'll like as well I'm Ricky the scuba DaVinci we'll catch you guys next week