Electric Motors That Don't Use Rare Earths

If it works it'll serve China right for being selfish/rediculous.

Same thing happened here in Europe with Natural Gas from Russia. Russia got greedy with Ukraine and cut their gas supply off (after bumping up the cost by about 100%), but this also cut it off to all of Europe to the east of Ukraine. All governments affected decided Russia could never be trusted and made alternative arrangements.

I'm sure there's a moral here somewhere!

 

GC, china's motives for reducing rare earth exports isn't completely bad:
China to control rare earth extraction, pollution | Reuters
Mining is a dirty business, environmentally, and part of china's goal is good. They don't necessarily want to pollute their self out of existence. China is already overwhelmed with their own environmental problems, and extracting rare earth for other countries only makes things worse. The U.S. could be mining its own rare earth minerals, but would rather import it, so that the U.S. doesn't have to deal with the dirty toxins. Is it fair that the U.S. exports its filth ? ... or expects other countries to burden their own back yard with environmental hazards? I'm simply saying it's not as simple as china holding other countries hostage ... but rather other countries not wanting to mine those elements to their own detriment.

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My guess, without doing any research on this subject, is that China was probably a little greedy and that is what has created alot of their problems. Why wouldn't someone buy from them if they were the cheapest source.

 

sure, they are holding other countries hostage... they want them to build plants in china to refine the ore basically.

they are not limiting production of rare metals, which would be environmental - or rather, for enviroment sake, they would have strict pollution laws... rather they are limiting exports so major players have to build factories there.

 

induction? without magnets?

 

yes, induction motor. The deficiency of induction motor is much weaker regen. It other words, the present Prius motor can regen down to 7mph, with induction motor the regen will likely be 15 mph or higher.

 

As it was explained to me a few years ago, the Chinese building boom kicked the cost of copper and steel up (by a factor of 5, back then) to a point where PM motors were at price parity with conventional wound induction motors One other attraction of PM motors for vehicles is that it offers the ability to make the wheels themselves motors -- eliminating all the losses in the drive train. About the same time I was told the story about raw materials costs (by a power-IC maker), I visited GM's advancead vehicle facility in Torrance and was shown an S-10 pickup test bed with a transverse electric motor driving the front wheels and separate wheel motors on the left and right sides in the back. Highly experimental, but it shows one of the things that car makers have been thinking about for some time already.

 

And efficiency overall? We can pass with no regen from 7-15mph, as it is not so good on the present synchronous MG1/MG2.

 

Most induction motors don't use permanent magnets. For that matter, neither do universal series motors. Until recently, when efficiency became more important, almost no AC motors used permanent magnet motors. The only place you used to find magnets in motors were in toys and battery powered devices. Times have changed.

Tom

 

What really mystifies me is that induction AC traction motors have been in use in the transportation industry for a Loooong time-- On railroads, specifically.

General Motors, back a decade ago when they still owned Electro-Motive, had produced very powerful freight locomotives with AC traction motors like the 4000-horsepower SD70MAC, and those things are reliable workhorses that are still plying the rails today. http://www.siemens.cz/extra/msv/cd/TS/Vozidla/Diesel-Electric_Loco_SD70MAC_EN.pdf

And if I remember correctly, the Japanese had been using induction AC traction motors in their Shinkansen high speed bullet trains as well.

General Electric has produced a Hybrid Diesel locomotive which is a modified GEVO ES44AC that does regenerative braking to store the recovered electricity (rather than dynamic braking where the regenerated electricity is dissipated through a heating grid). GE Unveils First Hybrid Road Locomotive

Kind of makes me wonder what kind of issues are preventing this technology from being downscaled for use in cars.

 

The technology used in railroad electric motors is too heavy and bulky for the power it generates to make sense in production cars. Fortunately there are other ways to reduce size and weight per horsepower.

 

I've got news for everyone. A permanent magnet (let alone a rare earth magnet) is not necessary in an electric motor. One simply needs to 'generate' or 'create' a magnet for the armature to push against. This can me done by running an electrical current through a coil. This was done in the early days of radio where a DC coil was used to create the magnet that the speaker coil pushed against. The downside to this is, obviously, it requires energy.
Perhaps as battery technology gets better, an electromagnet may replace permanent magnets?

 

Likewise, there is a trade-off between power and efficiency. Obviously locomotives need a LOT of power. Not so with a Prius. Permanent magnet motors can be designed for higher efficiency, but they don't scale up economically, so they aren't used for locomotives.

One attractive type of design is the hybrid synchronous motor, where it operates as a permanent magnet motor at lower power levels, but switches to induction at higher levels. The transition is inherent in the operation of the motor; it is not done through an add-on device. This works well for automotive use, where most of the time the power plant is idling along, but occasionally needs to provide bursts of power for hill climbing and acceleration. You get maximum efficiency for normal operation, but power when you need it.

Tom

 

I decided to remove my comment here on Magnesium-Sulfur batteries mentioned in the article and make a new thread, since it's really not on topic for this.

See Toyota Magnesium-sulfur battery? if you care.

 

Excellent.
And I'll bet Toyota's investment in Tesla and partnership with Tesla has something to do with the rights and technology to this also:

Perhaps, this was a huge driving force in Toyota's interest in investing in and partnering up with Tesla. Much like an acquisition, Toyota wanted to get this on their side in preparation for the future.
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