EV Motors Without Rare Earth Permanent Magnets
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
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...
https://haas.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/Niron-Magnetics...
https://www.nironmagnetics.com/scientific-publications/
Based on their publications, it looks like they have achieved an energy product of 20 mega-gauss-oersteds (MGOe). This is not as high as neodymium iron boron magnets, which can range from about 35-52 MGOe, but it's significantly higher than common ferrite magnets (up to 5.2 MGOe) and is about equal to the lower end of the samarium cobalt magnet range (16-32 MGOe).
In one sense iron nitride is very simple; it uses only two common elements and its magnetism has been known for decades. But simple is not easy, since it is difficult to make bulk magnets from the material while maintaining the correct element ratio and structure. I hope that Niron succeeds.
I don't know if there are any companies yet trying to commercialize synthetic tetrataenite.
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.
The only real resource usage concern for EVs remains the batteries.
Currently sodium battery makers are focused on stationary battery applications where energy density is less important.
Literally, pull into a swapping station, and have your battery swapped out for a charged one in a couple of minutes. Probably faster than fuelling up your car with petrol.
It's an interesting trade off between swapping station cost and time to charge. I suspect charge times will decrease enough that it's not worth all the physical investment in swapping, it may already not be.
Personally I don't see that becoming a reality anytime soon at least in the US.
Under 1% of EVs from 2016 or newer have had battery replacements.
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batter...
Early EVs skewed that a bit by having poor thermal and charging management of their batteries. Newer chemistries and packs with active thermal management reduce the issues significantly.
Different chemistries also have varying lifetimes. LFP batteries trade a bit of energy density for greater resiliency to charge cycles over their lifetime.
I have also not seen a noticeable change in my range for actual long distance driving over those years, and I do occasionally stretch it to near its full range.
The biggest change was putting wider, higher-performance all season tires on after the factory eco tires were worn out. Still I mostly noticed that efficiency change by tracking my stats on trips. There wasn’t really a noticeable difference from the drivers seat.
Just means "swap stations" instead of charging or gas stations.
The (major) challenge is what you do with 400-800kg of batteries and a bunch of different vehicle types from different manufacturers. Standardize the size/placement so a robot can do it? Break it down to smaller pack sizes so a human -- driver or attendant? -- can do it? Have each car manufacturer have their own set of stations?
Took everyone long enough to agree on a plug, would it be possible to agree on a swappable pack?
Lithium availability is not the limit to current batteries though.
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.
NOW?! Electric motors without rare earth magnets have exited since the very beginning of electric motors, long before those with rare earth magnets became popular due to their better efficiency. They're only now becoming unpopular due to the trade war with China where most of the mining was happening, not because they're somehow worse.
Semi-trucks are not good candidates for EV tech (yet)... high altitudes (or changing altitudes greatly during a trip) or cold weather affect battery capacity. Mountain people that need to go down to the city below them would not have a good experience with EVs.
For urban city dwelling people the biggest concern is being able to charge at home (so living in an apartment with street parking or no car spot makes having an EV difficult)... But more and more infrastructure is rolling out - so I expect most cars in cities to be EV's shortly...
It's sunsetting, the fossil fuel industry, but it won't go away completely until the needs of travel are covered completely by EV tech... Which is something we should be striving towards by recognizing (and eliminating/reducing) where EV's are not appropriate.
Combustion engines, especially naturally-aspirated ones, lose power at high altitudes due to lower air density for combustion.
Combustion vehicles spend just as much extra energy going uphill as EVs do, but that energy is not recouped on downhill sections.
EVs also get the benefit of not wearing mechanical brakes going downhill.
I drive my EV in mountains all the time with 5,000ft elevation changes without issue. Average travel speed (highways) matters more than elevation changes especially if your net elevation change is neutral over a round trip.
The main factor with lithium battery lifetime is charging cycles. Going up hill would drain the battery faster lead to be more charging, but it would be a small effect.
That's my experience with an EV, the regen is so good I'll gain back significant charge going down a mountain.
Electric motors have used electromagnets as the stator since they were invented, just FYI.
I know there are motors with permanent magnets in them now, but the vast majority of motors don’t have rare earth metals in them.
Obviously combustion fuels will not 100% go away(1), but the era of their dominance is quickly reaching its logical end.
(1) Kind of an unrelated note, but I think the most interesting aspect of this will be an era when fuel is still really common, but also commonly pulled by electric semis. It is closer than many think.
Wouldn't surprise me - your local gas station buys fuel from the closest refinery as shipping costs mean fuel from a different refinery is more expensive. While different stations can ask for different additives, it is rare that there is a second refinery that is close enough to be a reasonable option - and often the second refinery doesn't make the correct mixture for emissions in your state so they can't use it anyway.
The important take away is gas is shipping shorter distances and so an electric semi is reasonable (you need to recharge it, but there are options). This is different from cross country shipping where they want to use the same semi and can't wait for refueling.
It seems like almost the perfect case for electric trucks. At least I haven't seen a compelling reason to believe otherwise yet.
* The charging network is still splintered between a couple different standards, and even taken as a totality which isn't reflective of how it functions to a particular user, it's still woefully inadequate next to gas stations
* They still get obliterated by cold weather. Having to run electrical heaters both for the cabin/passengers and for the energy cells absolutely murders range, which is already the biggest issue with them.
* You throw out "lithium batteries without cobalt" as though lithium itself isn't a major part that requires sourcing and that we have a finite supply of, a ton of which is still being utterly wasted on single-use products because the market is absolutely stupid in certain key ways that libertarians like to ignore.
* The time required to charge an EV is just not acceptable for long-distance driving. It's just not. I can fill my 30 gallon V8 truck with gas in 5 minutes. The F-150 lightning takes TEN HOURS to charge. That's just not going to work. And if you're towing something a good distance? Hopeless. Utterly hopeless.
for level 2 charging... level 3 is ~30 minutes for a F-150. level 3 coverage is lower and not available in the house. If every gas station also had a level 3 charger - on a universal standard... I think that's the goal of EV infrastructure (to get to that scale), if that's actually achievable is another matter.
Yep, Lots of issues with EV's, still better than ICE in a growing number of situations as the tech improves.
The achievable is the problem. Most people are expect to level 2 charge at home most of the time. Level 2 charging is better for the battery so you will want to do that when not on road trips. Plus level 2 at home is likely to be cheaper - it can use cheaper off peak rates (though few have the ability to take advantage of this), and since there is no "gas station" to support there is less overhead and so you are going to pay less per watt. Thus there is every reason to expect there is much less need for "gas stations" to charge at.
On all major freeways I expect to see level 3 chargers about as often as you see gas stations and with more chargers than pumps (since you use them longer). However if you get off those main routes chargers will likely be much harder to find - most people using the current gas pumps are locals - and they will be filling at home.
However even 30 minutes is a problem. I'm guessing that's the 15% to 80% charge time. That's still a SIXTH of the throughput of a standard gas station, so to achieve the same rate of refueling (and I dunno about you, but highway-side gas stations are always pretty busy) you would not only need six times the fueling spaces available as a gas station, but you would also need like... something for those six-times-as-many vehicles worth of people to do for half an hour. People already get impatient standing next to a fuel pump for the little bit of time that takes, you expect them to sit there for the average length of a television block?
AND, that also assumes you can have the electrical backbone in place to let, what, 24 vehicles pull their maximum rapid-charge amount of electricity? Which is a fuck-shit-ass-load of electricity to pull.
You can’t directly compare these, there are lots of factors to take into account.
Lots of people will charge at home. I used a public charger yesterday for this first time in 6 months yesterday. It took 29 minutes. My time refuelling my diesel at 5 minutes a week would have been 2 hours. So for me it was a quarter of the usual time. Someone that can’t charge at home would be more.
Highway safety engineers are cheering - they want people to stop more often and take longer breaks for safety reasons. People can and often do stop only when the fuel tank is low, and they do all their bathroom time while the car is filling - this is very unsafe and people die from it. If the cars forced a longer stop those people would get some exercise, maybe take a nap - all things that increase safety.
You are correct that the people will hate it.
Battery tech is improving (some fancy stuff removing some components of li-ion batteries can improving the charging speed greatly: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138824811...)
If charging time can be put down to a couple of minutes, the number of chargers go down... powering them is the last question...
small scale (used fuel) nuclear reactors seem like a really promising option for fast power scaling. they can be built super fast (about 3 years - compared to the old-school options of 8-10 years). https://www.nuscalepower.com/-/media/nuscale/pdf/publication...
Yep. It's a lot of work: money to do it all is up for grabs. Opportunity for a lot of people is knocking.
I drove my Tesla Model 3 from Los Angeles to Houston and I think it may have taken an extra hour or two vs. my normal time for that route. Long distance driving already has a lot of down time when you’re stopping for lunch, dinner and other things and so spending half an hour to an hour charging at a supercharger just isn’t a big deal (if you’re doing full charges)
However, if time is important, driving until the battery hits 20% and doing five or ten minute charges is more efficient: the first 50% of the battery charges significantly faster than the second 50%, so it saves time to do more short stops vs. one long stop
In my opinion, a key problem with the EV transition is that it aims for the full transition, right at the start. We don't need that. What we need is regulation that mandates every new vehicle include a hybrid drivetrain. This gets around most of the issues above while allowing time for the industry to develop, supply chains to grow and for the electric grid to catch up to demand.
The other option is plug-in hybrids like the new Prius. 50-60 km of electric range covers the vast majority of drives. In Canada, the median commute is around 10 km. The Prius eliminates emissions for that commute entirely. The best part is that you can charge at home and not be forced to rely on the EV charging network.
Here's an example: Wyoming seems to have the highest average miles/year at around 25k, and charging overnight, even just at 120V, would be nearly enough to cover that. Increase that to a 240V, still totally feasible at home, and you more than double your typical charge in miles/overnight.
Not everyone would benefit from an EV, but there's so much ridiculous FUD around how infeasible they are. I only get about 200 miles per charge on mine, but even still I only need to plug in once or twice a week at 120V. The FUD is BS, EVs are so simple. I'm optimistic about my future never again including a trip to the gas station.
https://www.thezebra.com/resources/driving/average-miles-dri...
Please don't deliberately ignore data if you want to be taken seriously.
A L3 charger can take the F150 to 80% in under 30 minutes. That time is expected to drop to <20 minutes as 350kW (and higher) chargers come online, but it will be vehicle dependent, maybe the F150 in particular won't benefit from it. My Tesla M3 for example is limited to 170kW so won't benefit from chargers faster than that.
I really wish people who know nothing about EVs would stop opening their mouth and letting their belly rumble.