Future of EV’s ???
 

Last week I heard a shocking news report that as of today, China has control of more than 90% of the world’s rare-earth minerals.

What does this mean ? The Chinese will have a monopoly on magnets, similar to the Middle East control on Oil.

That could be bad news in the progress of the Electric Vehicle movement. Considering that all present traction motors in Electric Vehicles contain magnets. Controlling and restricting the magnet market could give China a strategic advantage and control of the entire EV market. :eek:

FYI:DailyTech - China Quietly Looks to Strangle U.S., Japanese EV Production

Google: china controlling magnets

That's not entirely true. Induction motors contain only copper and iron or aluminium. But yeah there is the possibility that we'd end up with a similar situation as today.

We need to start mining these 'rare earth' minerals on asteroids. They're not rare up there!

sawickm thanks for the link to the article, I also mean no offense to you by this reply but i do think the article is completely crazy.
It is very alarmist likely to grab attention for the article however it doesn't offer much substance or back up with many facts.
they mention "rare earth materials" but what exactly is that? you dont go to a factory and order some rare earth metal.
The article mentions china controls 95% of rare earth production however that doesn't mean china owns the land that 95% of rare earth materials can be mined from. So its not the same as the oil crisis. Rare earth materials (i think) are all around the world however it is just hard to purify them. China is good at cheaply making things so if china does choke off supply to the rest of the world other countries will start producing these "rare earth materials" just at higher cost
The article also says up to 5 years to bring a purifying plant online which i cant even slightly believe.

At very worst if all the rare earth materials cant be source for the cars the auto makers will just move back to standard motors which are less efficient but dont use rare earth magnets.
Note: only the very new electric motors may use rare earth magnets.

Here is another source of info on china's monopoly of rare earth materials
World Resources of Rare Earth Metals: China Controls the Market but Greenland Aims to Compete

its just my opinion but i dont think we need to worry just yet about the survival of electric cars.

Not crazy at all and Actually this is not alarmist, many proven sources of rare earth materials are owned by the Chinese, the US government is actually noticing that China may impede our ability to produce militiary tactical equip. because proven sources of these type of materials can take decades to develope. (there are deadly wars being fought right now in Africa over minerals you probably never heard of) And yes I said decades, we have NO active MINES for most of these materials, they are hit and miss to locate and the purification plants do indeed take 5 years due to the complexity of getting a 1ppb material into a usable quantity. There are some materials we have no natural supply of in the US.

These minerals are oddities you won't recognize but are critical for the production of everything from LCDs, to high speed ICs to stable high energy density batteries, magnets are the least of our wories. Also remember many rare earths go into vintage tech just as much as modern, so you can't use computer related tech or build catalytic converters should these go away. Not to mention the many thousands of chemical reactions used by industry that involve these materials to produce all manner of products.

If we can't produce stable hi end batteries and capacitors the electric car will stay where it is and not be able to progress to a point where most people would want to own one.

This is minor compared to the security issues since we will be held captive to chinese materials in regards to aerospace, defense systems on down to common LCDs, cell phones and most of the modern high tech marvels we enjoy now.

There are a lot of rather antique processes that have always depending on one rare earth or another to complete, all of that progress will be lost if rare earths become prohibitly difficult to source.

Cheers
Ryan

AC motors use no rare earth at all -- the Leaf has an AC motor.

exactly, permenent magnet motors produce alot of magnetic noise, but as Ryan pointed out every other part of the electronic world relies on these rare earth metals, want a rare earth magnet of your very own? crack open your hard drive on your computer and you will find one of the largest uses of them.

MOST big motors (AC OR DC) are all electro-magnetic - electricity through copper to make a pair of magnetic fields.

I don't think we have to worry about China having a monopoly on electric cars.

However, we SHOULD think about where our goods (especially electronics) come from and how they are made. We need to get much better about recycling them and also reduce our consumption. Unfortunately, our capitalist/consumer culture makes that difficult.

Magnets in hard drives are fun. Very compact and powerful. Just don't pinch your fingers with them.

Perhaps IBMs idea to make their 1981 5150 IBM PC electronics with a 25yr mean time between failures should be an indication of how long these systems SHOULD be used. Heck I have one still working and I did make it play a trixter full screen full motion video with sound, I can scan documents and I can even get on the internet in full text. Too bad more focus on using what you have and making do went out the window.

Perhaps designing systems to fail every year or every other is a burden our country can't bear with lots of hidden costs and the older built to last ideas where more founded?

I digress but you can see where I stand, I am typing this from a 15yr old computer on high speed DSL at the moment and yes it does work just fine :)

Japan develops rare earth free electric motor
hybridcarblog.com/japan-develops-rare-earth-free-electric-motor/

Right -- the Leaf has a rare earth free electric motor, and so are most AC motors.