On September 4, Elon Musk reposted a technical post on the X social platform, personally confirming that the Cybercab autonomous taxi is equipped with a brand-new drive motor that completely eliminates rare earth metals, and claimed its range can match that of traditional rare earth permanent magnet motors. This announcement has drawn widespread attention from both public opinion and the industry. Is it really as simple as Musk described?
This event represents a genuine engineering breakthrough, but it is far more complex than Musk's one-sentence summary suggests, with clear application boundaries—this is not a universal, all-purpose motor.
The technology is highly specific: designed exclusively for low-speed, urban autonomous taxis.
The Cybercab is a two-seater lightweight vehicle, primarily operating in urban environments at low speeds, requiring no frequent sustained high-speed driving, heavy loads, or high-torque hill climbing. However, its drawbacks include greater susceptibility to demagnetization at high temperatures and suboptimal performance under extreme high-power conditions. This motor is currently used only in the Cybercab and has not yet been adapted to consumer or heavy-duty vehicles such as the Model 3/Y or pickup trucks. Whether it can replace rare earth permanent magnets across all operating conditions remains unverified.
In simple terms: this achievement matches the range of rare earth motors only under the specific constraint of “urban low-speed, light-load” scenarios—not implying that simply swapping in this motor will allow any electric vehicle to achieve equivalent range to rare earth permanent magnet motors.
Industry analysis indicates that the Cybercab’s excellent range results from a combination of vehicle weight reduction, low aerodynamic drag, compact size, urban operating conditions, and the new motor. It cannot be oversimplified as: “just switch this motor into existing Model Ys, and they’ll maintain the same range without rare earth materials.” If this motor were directly installed in a two-tonne SUV, the range would clearly decline significantly.
Related analysis suggests that laboratory and short-term test data are promising, but the long-term performance of ferrite magnets—particularly their degradation due to temperature extremes, aging, and repeated start-stop cycles—still requires several years of large-scale real-world road testing. Currently, the data comes only from new car launch events, not from accumulated operational experience over multiple years.
Experts believe Musk’s statement does not imply an immediate disruption of the rare earth industry.
For mainstream passenger vehicles, high-performance sports cars, heavy-duty commercial vehicles, wind power generation, and large industrial motors, neodymium-iron-boron rare earth permanent magnets remain the optimal choice in the near term.
Tesla has achieved rare-earth-free development only in a single niche vehicle segment—not a complete elimination of rare earth materials across the board.
This marks Tesla’s fulfillment of its 2023 Investor Day commitment to develop next-generation motors: demonstrating that rare-earth-free permanent magnet motors are viable for mass production in lightweight, low-speed urban applications, thereby reducing reliance on rare earth supply chains. However, this is a scenario-specific systems engineering effort—not a revolutionary, universally applicable new material.
Media and public discourse exaggerating claims such as “completely freeing from rare earth” or “universal replacement” are greatly overstated.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1875811373313027/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.