Cheaper drives for the Model 2
The Tesla announcement is therefore bad news for the shareholders: Because the mass model of the electric car giant could need significantly fewer chips. Even though Musk hasn’t unveiled a finished concept in Texas, it’s understood that Tesla is working on a new entry-level car. In the almost four-hour presentation, investors were shown a veiled model twice, and several managers spoke of a “next gen” model, i.e. a next-generation vehicle.
Internally, this is the code name for the “Model 2”, which at $30,000 is said to be a quarter cheaper than Tesla’s cheapest model to date. Due to the high battery cell prices, such a price is currently difficult to implement economically.
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Tesla therefore wants to reduce or completely replace expensive preliminary products and raw materials such as SiC, but also rare earths – and thus produce the electric drive more cheaply. Tesla engineer Campbell spoke of $1,000 for a drive unit that includes the motor, transmission and inverter. The price would be much lower than Tesla is currently estimating. Exact numbers are not known.
In order to achieve the cost target, Tesla also wants to do without rare earths. With their magnetic properties, neodymium or dysprosium are ideal for electric motors with permanent magnets. Compared to induction motors, these impress with their higher performance and efficiency. However, rare earths have some disadvantages: They are scarce, expensive, often only to be mined in an environmentally harmful way – and currently a large proportion come from China.
Tesla plans rare earth-free motor
According to Campbell, Tesla now wants to build an electric motor with permanent magnets that does not require any rare earths. However, the head of Tesla’s propulsion systems said nothing about a timeline or other details. Nevertheless, the announcement led to sharp price losses in Chinese mine stocks that mine rare earths – including Nonferrous Metals and China Rare Earth.
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“It would be a major setback for the rare earths industry,” Yang Jiwan, an analyst at industry service Shanghai Metal Market, told financial services firm Bloomberg. “However, Tesla didn’t say anything about a substitute, so I’m cautious.”
Tesla also gave no details on the reduction of silicon carbide chips. The Californians have been using SiC for their inverters, among other things, since 2017. These are electronic control units that direct the energy from the battery to the motor in an electric car.
The combination of silicon and carbon is energy efficient and takes up little space. SiC allows vehicle manufacturers to either use smaller batteries or offer a longer range. “Silicon carbide is a very light and also the hardest ceramic material with very good thermal conductivity and very good resistance,” according to the electronics industry association ZVEI. In addition, silicon carbide enables a shorter charging time.
The composite thus helps to solve the fundamental problems of electromobility. It’s worth using, even though the material costs at least twice as much as conventional silicon. “Efficiency and the range that can be achieved as a result counts for electric cars, which is why SiC is so important,” explains Peter Fintl, chip expert at the consulting firm Capgemini.
Great tasks therefore await Tesla’s development department.
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