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Its a shame the USA has only one Musk.
With a couple guys like Musk, the USA could be a world beater.
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Whatever the components are, they will be "rare" if they need to be mined, and if leftists/progressives have any say in permitting and production.
I watched the YouTube video about this new electric motor a couple days ago.
Musk is a genius.
Wait until he comes out with EV’s to sell for under $30K.
GM will be out of business. As they should be.
Sodium Ion batteries are on the horizon.
I may not be remembering correctly, but I believe one
Chinese manufacturer is coming out with a car that uses
them. Others are.
While these may not quite be ready for primetime in the
more advanced electric vehicles, in the next few years
I believe they will be.
This and other developments are why I don’t quite see
the dire predictions for electric vehicles based on
lithium to be worth pondering over. Lithium is
recognized as bad, and it is probably already on its
way out.
https://thedriven.io/2022/12/02/byd-to-launch-electric-hatchbacks-with-new-sodium-ion-batteries/
Won’t a new type of battery make all the previously made vehicles obsolete and unmaintainable?
But, I heard that the new power for the Teslas is coming from cow farts, with 2 cows in the back seat providing the necessary gas to power the electric motor.
It is the batteries that are the real problem.
Motors, not batteries.
What I’m writing here is information I gleaned as a newly minted engineer from thirty years ago sitting in on design reviews for equipment designed to go into space and/or on planes where weight and power density where the paramount decision factors. There was always an ordinary substitute material. The problem was weight or power density. If you’re designing a motor in a car that’s not optimized for, say, racing, then weight is not a factor.
NASA has developed motor designs that are significantly more efficient than what I learned about in college. I don’t know if those designs require unobtainium or not. My guess is, even if they do that there’s a workaround.
China made a serious mistake while Trump was president. They attempted to use their stranglehold on “rare” Earth metals as blackmail. Trump husbanded the reopening of a mine out west that could have provided all of our military needs. It was about to open despite the local EPA when he left office. I haven’t heard anything about it since.
However I have a brilliant idea on how Tesla can disrupt the auto industry again, while going from 5% to 50% of domestic new car sales.
Make a ICE only hybrid Cybertruck (all electric drivetrain with a sub 3 liter gas engine generator).
It would have all of the handling, torque, and power advantages of an EV version without range anxiety or over reliance on rare earth metals (with the exception of the drivetrain).
And all I ask of Musk for this plan to disrupt and own the domestic auto industry is I get the first one off of the assembly line (fully loaded of course).
China Joe will be working to scuttle the project. ‘The Big Guy’ wants to keep the ChiCom payoffs rolling in for his family.
None of this changes the fact that we don’t have the power generating infrastructure for any significant portion of the driving public to switch to battery-only EVs.
But it would make it a good time to invest in the fire extinguisher business.
EV’s are a solution looking for a problem.