Honda Unveils First Hybrid Motor Without Heavy Rare Earth Metals (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Honda has unveiled its new hybrid motor this week that doesn't use heavy rare earth metals like dysprosium and terbium -- though it still does contain neodymium. The motor was co-developed alongside Daido Steel and will use their magnets in replace of the rare earth metals because they cost 10 percent less and weigh 8 percent less. Honda is the first automaker to develop a hybrid motor that doesn't use heavy rare earth metals. The company says the new engines will reduce its reliance on the metals that are primarily supplied by China. They're expected to make their debut in the compact Freed minivan this fall, a vehicle that is already on the road in Asia.

Comments

lip service

[Gravis Zero]

The company says the new engines will reduce its reliance on the metals that are primarily supplied by China.

This is pure lip service. Guess where they get all their steel that composes 80% of the car from? Yeah, it's all coming from China anyway, so this is meaningless.

Re:lip service

[fustakrakich]

Yeah, but unlike the heavy stuff, steel is pretty easy to get from other sources. Right now China's is cheaper, it only makes sense to buy it from there.

Re:lip service

[WindBourne]

not really. By buying from China, you will ALWAYS pay more than what China will. Not just for shipping, but CHina also puts an EXPORT tariffs on these, and will make sure that the steel sold in China is a fraction of the price elsewhere. That means that you can not compete directly with China, UNLESS you control the vertical manufacturing.

Re:lip service

[fustakrakich]

?

The only reason to buy steel from China is if it's cheaper than other sources. Their domestic market or tariffs are irrelevant if you buy from somebody else, say, the US.

Or is the Honda factory in China?

Re:lip service

[MillionthMonkey]

The company says the new engines will reduce its reliance on the metals that are primarily supplied by China.

This is pure lip service. Guess where they get all their steel that composes 80% of the car from?

[Staring at periodic table...] Hey, where the hell is China?

Re:lip service

[TuringTest]

[Staring at periodic table...] Hey, where the hell is China?

Right between ceramic and clay.

Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[mspohr]

The Tesla has an AC induction motor (invented by Nicolai Tesla) which is just steel and copper. No rare earth magnets... no magnets at all.
It's about time the rest of the auto industry woke up and started putting some "advanced technology" in their fossil fuel powered cars.
https://www.teslamotors.com/bl...

Re: Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[Anonymous Coward]

Honda's main problem here is that when you have both a petrol and electric motor, you need to drag one or the other around with you much of the time as dead weight. It is therefore much more important to keep weight and size down compared to a pure electric.

Permanent magnet motors offer about 1.5-2x the power to weight of an induction motor, and I can only imagine that is why they are still using them.

A better alternative would be a switched reluctance motor, but large pole count versions of these are tied up in stupid patents by a company in the UK.

Re: Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[mspohr]

It's complicated and there are many factors. This section from the article I linked has some of them:
"In contrast, induction machines have no magnets and B fields are “adjustable,” since B is proportionate to V/f (voltage to frequency). This means that at light loads the inverter can reduce voltage such that magnetic losses are reduced and efficiency is maximized. Thus, the induction machine when operated with a smart inverter has an advantage over a DC brushless machine – magnetic and conduction losses can be traded such that efficiency is optimized. This advantage becomes increasingly important as performance is increased. With DC brushless, as machine size grows, the magnetic losses increase proportionately and part load efficiency drops. With induction, as machine size grows, losses do not necessarily grow. Thus, induction drives may be the favored approach where high-performance is desired; peak efficiency will be a little less than with DC brushless, but average efficiency may actually be better."

Re:Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[JanneM]

Induction motors have lower torque and worse efficiency, though.

Re:Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[mspohr]

There are pros and cons to each approach:
"Thus, the induction machine when operated with a smart inverter has an advantage over a DC brushless machine – magnetic and conduction losses can be traded such that efficiency is optimized. This advantage becomes increasingly important as performance is increased. With DC brushless, as machine size grows, the magnetic losses increase proportionately and part load efficiency drops. With induction, as machine size grows, losses do not necessarily grow. Thus, induction drives may be the favored approach where high-performance is desired; peak efficiency will be a little less than with DC brushless, but average efficiency may actually be better."

Re:Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[Z00L00K]

And a long time ago rare earth metals were unusual in cars.

And those that did exist was usually just seen as contaminants.

Re:Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[evilviper]

Ferraris was the first to demo an induction motor,

Try again...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re: Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[michelcolman]

A Tesla motor produces 362 horsepower and weighs 70 pounds. Even if a permanent magnet motor can be lighter by a factor of 2, it's not going to affect performance that much. The weight of the batteries, and the efficiency of the motor, are much more important. And for range, steady state low load performance is most important as most long range driving is done on a highway. Induction motors are better there. Permanent magnets might be better for city driving, but that's not really the limiting factor for range for most people unless you're driving a taxi.

Re: Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[xrobertcmx]

Honda's main problem, as the owner of one, and prior owner of another, is that their Hybrids do not compete. I get at best 43mpg in my Civic and my old 2010 Insight topped out around 44mpg. They don't drag anything around as they use an IMA (Integrated motor assist) that just "assists" the gas motor when accelerating.

Re:Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[MercTech]

I thought the rare earths were found in the magnets used in the motors and in the manufacture of the high electrical density batteries. If not magnets and batteries; where are they using rare earth compounds?

      I've been challenging the concept of electric cars being better for the environment for years. Looking from a total system point of view; very change in energy form has inherent losses. For an electric car you go from chemical fuel or nuclear energy to mechanical power to electrical power to chemically stored electricity then back to mechanical power. It is inherently more efficient to burn your fuel and go straight to mechanical power where you need the power. With the power factor of motors and generators being, at best, 28%; it seems that an electric car is a huge NIMBY issue as it causes more fossil fuel to be consumed overall just not in the car. No decent engineer will ignore entropy but politicians and salesmen don't even acknowledge that law of nature.

Re:Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[mspohr]

The problem for fossil fueled internal combustion engines (ICE) is that they are very inefficient at converting the heat from the fuel to motion... about 25-30% at best. OTOH, large generating stations and the electrical distribution network are much more efficient. So even after going through electrical distribution and battery charge/discharge losses (about 10%), it is a much more efficient use of fossil fuels to power an electric car. Of course, if your electric car is powered by renewables (hydro, solar, wind), you don't have any CO2 / NOx emissions. Nationwide, coal only generates about 35% of electricity. Even if you run your electric car solely on coal generated electricity, it is still more efficient than an ICE.
One other little known fact is that it takes a large amount of electricity to refine oil to gas/diesel and if you put that electricity into an electric car, it could travel as far as an ICE car could on the refined fuel.
So, yes, electric cars are a win for the environment from an engineering standpoint.

Re:Tesla doesn't use rare earth metals

[jabuzz]

Yeah and I just watched the other week a Top Gear episode where a Tesla X out performed some Dodge muscle car, so clearly there is still *WAY* more torque in that motor than necessary for normal driving.

Dear Brain Master

[Anonymous Coward]

China is in a special position with rare earth elements because, while not quite a monopoly, for some of the metals it is very, very close. They are an extremely important supplier of several rare earth elements.

Steel? You can get that from just about any country.

Re:Dear Brain Master

[bhcompy]

Rare earth metals aren't all that rare. It's just that other countries don't want to destroy their environments mining them.

Re:Dear Brain Master

[alvinrod]

It's not due to supply, but rather the cost of extraction. Both the United States and Australia (among others) have good supplies of many rare earth metals (as well as reserves of some rare metals that China has very little of such as Tantalum) but due to China's devil may care attitude towards environmental regulations, they can extract theirs at far lower costs than other countries, and if anyone else were attempt to start, there's no doubt that China would cut prices temporarily to destroy the competition.

Even if we were mining it ourselves, we'd ship most of it to China anyhow as that's where most of it would be put into manufacturing components that require those elements.

Re:Dear Brain Master

[Rei]

This whole story is silly to begin with. Regardless of what Honda tends to put in their hybrids, makers of electric cars tend to use AC induction motors which don't use any rare earth metals. There's no rare earths used anywhere in the Model S, for example.

(and more to the point, you can get rare earths from just about any country too - they're not actually that rare (just dispersed). But China produces them the cheapest)

Re:Dear Brain Master

[WalksOnDirt]

There's no rare earths used anywhere in the Model S, for example.

I very much doubt that's true. I would expect some rare earth use in the phosphors of the LED lights, for example. The amount used is probably pretty trivial since the main motors don't use them.

Re:Dear Brain Master

[WindBourne]

Actually, it is not a big deal to mine them. The problem is, that China is manipulating this market in a HUGE way. Moly Corp in America has a clean means of mining. BUT, when they invested loads of money into it, then China dumped REE on the market and plummetted the price. Sadly, the west allowed it. And Moly Corp booted the old CEO, and brought in a Canadian who was very friendly with China. So, he shut down EVERYTHING in the west and pushed it all to CHina. Now, they are back in control, while this Canadian CEO is worth 100s' of millions over this BS.

Re:Dear Brain Master

[blindseer]

I have learned that there is a different problem. Certainly mining disturbs the earth, and extracting the metals from the ore is a process requiring some nasty chemicals and lots of energy, but we've learned how to do both without damaging the environment. The real problem is that of regulation.

Rare earth elements tend to be found in the same places as thorium. Current regulations in the USA treat thorium as a weapon grade material since, in theory, thorium can be used to produce uranium-233 which, in theory, can be used to produce a "Little Boy" style bomb. There's a couple problems with that. Producing uranium from thorium requires neutron bombardment and, if the process does not remove the uranium from the neutron source quickly enough, separation of the different uranium isotopes produced. This is not an easy process and would take considerable effort to produce. The other problem with using uranium-233 in a weapon is that no one has successfully demonstrated it as workable. There was one such bomb produced and it fizzled out.

Unlike uranium, which occurs naturally in different isotopes, thorium exists naturally in only one isotope. There is no such thing as "enriched" thorium since it is already better than 99.9% pure out of the ground. There are some traces of other isotopes but only so much that it is barely detectable.

Because the mining of rare earths produces tails containing everything but the rare earths that are extracted the natural thorium in the tails is almost always of a concentration that it would be considered high level nuclear waste. No one wants to pay to dispose of this since that would destroy their profits. China doesn't worry about this, they just pile up the thorium ore.

It's perfectly safe to pile up the thorium ore because it is not water soluble, it won't contaminate the water. It's quite dense, so it does not tend to blow away in the wind. It's a heavy element but it's not fissile, so it's not going to go critical and glow in the dark. It's radioactive but the half life is more than 14 billion years, meaning it's radioactive in a more theoretical sense. It's an alpha particle emitter, so when it does decay the radiation emitted is stopped by the skin, clothing, or a short distance through the air.

Thorium as a commonly used element for many years to make gas lamp mantles because it made a very intense and white light when heated. It also made some interesting alloys and was used to make optical lenses. This ended when the federal government thought that someone might use thorium to make a bomb, even though their own experiments proved it to be a poor fuel to build a bomb.

So, here we are. We buy our rare earth elements from China where they pile up the thorium ore like worthless and inert sand, because that is what it is. We don't dare do the same here because someone might take that sand and put it in a nuclear reactor to make weapon grade uranium, because if you have enough enriched uranium to make a reactor then... my head hurts just trying to follow the logic.

The laws in the USA on nuclear materials are stupid. Because of our own stupid laws we cannot mine our own rare earth elements.

We could make that thorium useful, not just for gas lamp mantles, but to produce energy. Thorium can be put in a reactor to make uranium but the uranium is worthless for bombs. What it is useful for is producing energy. An experimental thorium reactor was built decades ago but the technology was abandoned. If we could have some sane laws on radioactive materials then we'd not only solve our rare earth supply problem but our energy supply problem.

To those that think that a thorium reactor would produce a bunch of nuclear waste, or potentially blow up like Chernobyl, need to look up the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor, LFTR. The acronym is often pronounced as "lifter". Look it up, you will be impressed.

Re:Dear Brain Master

[blindseer]

The major component of concern on the waste produced from rare earth mining is thorium. Thorium is not an environmental hazard since it's biologically inert, is insoluble in water, is dense enough it doesn't really blow around in the wind, it just sits there. It is mildly radioactive but then so much stuff in the world is radioactive that tossing it in hole in the ground is a perfectly acceptable way to dispose of it.

The US government treats thorium as if it is weapon grade material. In theory it can be used to make a bomb but when the government tried it failed. What I mean by "in theory" it is a weapon grade material is that if placed in a nuclear reactor it will soak up neutrons to make uranium. The uranium would have to be enriched, like with centrifuges. The enriched uranium would then have to be machined into a pit for a bomb core. Then one would have to design a finely tuned implosion system. The implosion detonation would have to be precisely timed, and then one would likely be disappointed on how it didn't make an earth shattering ka-boom. Because when the federal government tried this decades ago it didn't work so great then.

Rare earth mines in the USA are not selected on the quality of the rare earth elements, they are selected on the lack of thorium. The quality deposits will contain thorium but if that thorium is mined then the mining company would be responsible for its disposal. The Chinese just pile it up because it's worthless and harmless. We can't do that in the USA because some people decided that the theory of a weapon threat out weighed that of the value of having a domestic supply of these valuable metals.

If we could refine it legally in the USA then we would not have to ship it off to China. If this thorium is in fact a weapon grade material then should we be shipping it off to a nation that we don't have the best political relationship with right now? We're giving them material that is vital to our economy *AND* giving them what the federal government (wrongly IMHO) believes to be worthy of producing nuclear weapons.

Good job! Our federal laws makes us reliant on a potential military adversary for vital materials for our economy. These same materials used in every modern weapon system we have, from the F-22 fighter, to the radios, to the GPS units our soldiers carry, to the alternators in the trucks the military uses to move soldiers and supplies. At the same time we're shipping what is potentially fuel for nuclear power reactors, and possibly (in theory) material to make nuclear weapons.

It's nice that Honda figured out how to make an electric motor without these elements but what about everything else? The targeting lasers for our weapons will not work without these elements. What if China doesn't want to give them to us any more?

Re:Dear Brain Master

[Rei]

You're pretending that the difference in Chinese costs are drastically different from those elsewhere. They're not. California for example was a rare earth producer until China started dumping on the market. There were some efforts underway to restart production the last I checked.

The efficiency difference is in the range of a couple percent. It's not a practical difference. And at least in compact, high power applications (EVs), AC induction motors tend to be favored at higher powers because they don't require expensive permanent magnets, and because permanent magnets at those strengths can be challenging to work with.

The whole world could run out of rare earths for permanent magnets and you'd hardly notice the difference.

Re:Dear Brain Master

[BlueStrat]

Good post, well thought out.

There's just this part:

...our energy supply problem.

Just wanted to point out that one peoples' "problem" is another set of peoples' "tools for control of people".

The "energy problem" could be effectively "solved" in a few years and without raping the environment or climate, but that destroys a means of control and profit for those at the very top (and I don't necessarily mean politicians/heads-of-State) so the status quo is maintained as much as possible. Any changes are in small, incremental steps and strictly controlled/regulated in a top-down manner so innovation is also discouraged.

Much like the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone yet there is still starvation, so there is the potential for nearly limitless and cheap energy for all and yet we still have "energy crisis".

It's politics and the desire of a few to control the lives of many that stand in the way of solving both problems (and many, many others as well). In other words, base human nature combined with apathy in combating it and working to rise above it, are once again our own worst enemies.

Strat

Re:Dear Brain Master

[MercTech]

And one of the silly things in the U.S. are the horrendous restrictions on people "processing hazardous waste". We really have a huge stockpile of trans platinum metals left in the piles of toxic mine tailings in the Rockies. If you want to do an extraction from mine tailings for mineral sthat were of no interest when the tailings were first dug, you are considered to be repossessing hazardous waste and get hit with a huge number of restrictions that would not apply if you were mining fresh rock for those metals. It is estimated that there is more platinum sitting in old gold and silver mine railings in the Rockies than the world supply in a given year. (Heard that tidbit from a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. Sounds plausible but I've not fact checked his figures.)
        Personally, I think it is criminal to be sending tons and tons of hazardous waste into controlled landfills when the majority of the "hazmat" could be recycled into useful material. i.e. only 30% of the fissile material is used up in a "used" nuclear fuel assembly. We should be recycling and using MOX (Mixed Oxide) fuel as they have been doing in Europe for decades.

Re:Dear Brain Master

[AK Marc]

Nope. Australia has more rare earth metals than China does. China just sells them at cost, to prop up the industries that use them, mainly centered in China. If the price increased, Australia would start mining them again, and in large quantities.

"Rare" as in rare earth metals doesn't mean "rare" as in the dictionary definition. "Rare" means "not found in veins or other highly concentrated areas". The actual proportion of

Re:Dear Brain Master

[LordWabbit2]

And for those who don't feel like hitting wiki...

The liquid fluoride thorium reactor (acronym LFTR; often pronounced lifter) is a type of molten salt reactor. LFTRs use the thorium fuel cycle with a fluoride-based, molten, liquid salt for fuel. Molten-salt-fueled reactors (MSRs) supply the nuclear fuel in the form of a molten salt mixture. They should not be confused with molten salt-cooled high temperature reactors (fluoride high-temperature reactors, FHRs) that use a solid fuel.[1] Molten salt reactors, as a class, include both burners and breeders in fast or thermal spectra, using fluoride or chloride salt-based fuels and a range of fissile or fertile consumables. LFTRs are defined by the use of fluoride fuel salts and the breeding of thorium into uranium-233 in the thermal spectrum. In a LFTR, thorium and uranium-233 are dissolved in carrier salts, forming a liquid fuel. In a typical operation, the liquid is pumped between a critical core and an external heat exchanger where the heat is transferred to a nonradioactive secondary salt. The secondary salt then transfers its heat to a steam turbine or closed-cycle gas turbine.[2] This technology was first investigated at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment in the 1960s. It has recently been the subject of a renewed interest worldwide.[3] Japan, China, the UK and private US, Czech, Canadian[4] and Australian companies have expressed intent to develop and commercialize the technology. LFTRs differ from other power reactors in almost every aspect: they use thorium rather than uranium, operate at low pressure, receive fuel by pumping without shutdown, entail no risk of nuclear meltdown, use a salt coolant and produce higher operating temperatures.[5] These distinctive characteristics give rise to many potential advantages, as well as design challenges.

It's not that hard

[bgarcia]

Honda could simply switch to using an AC induction motor, like Tesla. Not only doesn't it have any rare-earth magnets - it doesn't have magnets at all!

Hell, GE switched to using AC induction motors in their diesel-electric locomotives back in the 1990s. Get with the program, Honda!

Re:It's not that hard

[Anonymous Coward]

It is true that AC induction motors don't have magnets, but they also have a markedly worse power to weight ratio, so they have disadvantages in automotive applications where the vehicle accelerates frequently. It is less of a worry on trains, where the extra weight is a tiny fraction of the whole train's mass, and the train doesn't start and stop very often. It is a larger factor for automobiles though.

Re:It's not that hard

[bobbied]

It's not a large factor on a train because they are not battery powered.... You either get your power from a diesel engine or from the overhead electric lines, so you don't have to be all that efficient. Second, you are not really weight constrained in a Train locomotive either, more weight doesn't affect the efficiency much.

In a battery powered device, efficiency is paramount and both motor efficiency and lower weight are advantages. It's all about going the most distance on a charge right now, and so far, battery powered vehicles are *really* lacking range over their fossil fueled siblings.

Re:It's not that hard

[wchin]

Not according to Musk:

https://chargedevs.com/newswir...

Totally misleading headline

[Sir Holo]

Neodymium is a rare earth element.

All of them are heavy.

Facts about Japanese production

[sjbe]

This is pure lip service. Guess where they get all their steel that composes 80% of the car from? Yeah, it's all coming from China anyway, so this is meaningless.

First, steel does not compose 80% of a vehicle. The number is somewhere around 55% on average though it obviously varies by vehicle and it is about 25% of the cost of the vehicle. Second, Japanese car manufacturers do get some steel from China but they also get a very substantial amount domestically. Japan has a fairly robust domestic steel industry including 2 of the 10 biggest steel makers by volume in the world. There are also numerous steel suppliers who have no production in China at all. It's definitely not "all coming from China". Third, "the metals that are primarily supplied by China" they are talking about are rare earth elements, not comparatively common metals like steel. Don't conflate the two. Japan could in principle source all their steel from somewhere other than China if they wanted to. For rare earths, China is basically the only game in town right now. Totally different markets.

Re:Facts about Japanese production

[drinkypoo]

First, steel does not compose 80% of a vehicle. The number is somewhere around 55% on average though it obviously varies by vehicle and it is about 25% of the cost of the vehicle. Second, Japanese car manufacturers do get some steel from China but they also get a very substantial amount domestically. Japan has a fairly robust domestic steel industry including 2 of the 10 biggest steel makers by volume in the world.

Last time I checked, Japanese cars were made primarily out of recycled American cars. But that's probably outdated now, because American cars are no longer being made out of mild steel, and that's what made using them as material attractive. When you recycle steel, it gets harder and more brittle. You can add things to it to avoid that, but you don't have to if that's what you want anyway. That's one of the great things about Aluminum; it doesn't do that. It's more expensive to make a car from initially, but the recycling is cheaper.

Re: Facts about Japanese production

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. If you pick up a piece of sheet steel and bend it into a new shape then sure, it's material characteristics change (every deformation of solid metal changes it's microscopic structure). But that's not how you recycle steel; rather you dump it into an arc furnace and make new steel out if it -- and then its exactly like new steel.

Re:Facts about Japanese production

[Ogive17]

Japanese cars built in N. America use a higher grade steel (in most cases) than American automotive companies. Stronger and more resistant to corrosion. Now was that steel recycled in some way? That I do not know.

My wife was recently the steel buyer for a tier 1 supplier to many of the OEs.

Planned takeover

[sjbe]

Rare earth metals aren't all that rare. It's just that other countries don't want to destroy their environments mining them.

Partly that and partly that China has made it uneconomical to mine them elsewhere. Not by accident either. China's government has strategically supported this with subsidies and cheap labor.

Re:Planned takeover

[MercTech]

I can see that. Many countries resist having massive strip mines. The countries that don't give a moldy fig for the health of the peasants are economically positioned to roll with plenty of massive strip mine operations. Keeping your costs down can go a long way to controlling a market.

Re:MISSING SOMETHING

[bobbied]

If you eliminate the rare earth magnets, you still need the magnetic field to make an electric motor go. After all, electric motors are really just using magnetic forces to turn the shaft of the motor. You can generate this magnetic field from rare earths or by using electromagnets. Electromagnets involve passing an electric current though copper windings. Generating this magnetic field consumes power (the IR losses in the wire to heat and the Flux losses from the running motor), lowering your motor's efficiency.

However, I would like to point out that by using electromagnets you can drastically change the motor's torque at a given RPM, so where the motor is less efficient, it's partially offset by less of a need for gear boxes and transmissions because you can get huge amounts of torque out of electric motors at various RPMs if you can precisely control both the field and armature currents and phases. (Actually this is why they use them on train locomotives..)

So, there are advantages, but you are going to get less miles out of your battery's charge if you don't have the rare earth magnets, and right now, the range and recharge times are a serious blocker for adoption of EV's so manufacturers are pushing for all the range they can get.

Re: Republicans raped me in Brazil

[BlytheBowman]

"The republicans have saved us from slavery" You do realise the Republican party of 1863 is not the same Republican party of today, right?

Re:Republicans raped me in Brazil

[Darinbob]

The party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower is not the same political party as the party of Helms, Gingrich, and Reagan. The party that freed the slaves versus Nixon's "southern strategy" party that wooed the segregationists.

Re:Republicans raped me in Brazil

[AK Marc]

Eisenhower was a good Republican. People refer to his warning about the military industrial complex (MIC), like Washington's warning about political parties. The reference in Eisenhower's farewell wasn't a warning. It was an apology. And Republicans ever since did the same thing, growing the MIC, at the expense of liberty and fiscal responsibility. Eisenhower looks like the first of the modern Republicans. Do as I say, not as I do, and starting the MIC.

they could switch to AC motors and improve things

[WindBourne]

Seriously, by going to an AC motor, as opposed to DC, they could improve their efficiency, lower costs, and increase torque.

uh, no

[WindBourne]

In Japan, they block CHinese steel, because China dumps on their markets and Japan will not allow that, like America does.
SO, their steel comes from Japan, while their IRON comes from Australia and South America.

Re:they could switch to AC motors and improve thin

[Sir Holo]

Seriously, by going to an AC motor, as opposed to DC, they could improve their efficiency, lower costs, and increase torque.

And the efficient AC power source for a battery-powered electric car? Where would that come from?

DC–>AC Converters are expensive, and they wear out. Ask anyone in the solar energy industry.

Re: Republicans raped me in Brazil

[NicknameUnavailable]

"The republicans have saved us from slavery" You do realise the Republican party of 1863 is not the same Republican party of today, right?

Nice liberal revisionism you have going there. 8/10.

Re:they could switch to AC motors and improve thin

[AaronW]

I hate to break it to you but the synchronous motors used in most hybrids and EVs require AC as well. All brushless motors require AC in order to generate a rotating magnetic field. In fact, the controllers are not all that different between an induction and a synchronous motor. The synchronous motor is dependent on the rotor position whereas the induction motor is dependent on the rotors speed. The actual drive of the motor coils is similar.

Generating AC from DC is actually not difficult with modern semiconductors which can handle a tremendous amount of current and they've also proven to be quite reliable as well. Every modern hybrid and EV ever made requires AC to drive the motor, regardless if it is an induction motor or not.

woosh..

[Chrisq]

woosh...

The inventor of the induction motor was Galileo Ferraris, but it is often credited falsely credited to Nikola Tesla.

Recycling steel

[sjbe]

Last time I checked, Japanese cars were made primarily out of recycled American cars.

Not sure where you got this nugget. Certainly not the case today or any time in the last 40 years. Pretty sure it was never true. Citations?

When you recycle steel, it gets harder and more brittle.

Not sure where you got this one either. Contaminants are an issue at times but as a general proposition steel does not "get harder and more brittle" from recycling. Heck, the second largest steel maker in the US (Nucor) basically built their business on recycling steel. Steel is just as recyclable as aluminum and is one of the most recycled materials we use.

Re:Recycling steel

[drinkypoo]

Not sure where you got this nugget. Certainly not the case today or any time in the last 40 years. Pretty sure it was never true. Citations?

My auto body instructor told me. He was ASE master certified, which means he knew a thing or three.

But

[Ol Olsoc]

Is the car gluten free?

Technician not the same as an engineer

[sjbe]

My auto body instructor told me. He was ASE master certified, which means he knew a thing or three.

Doesn't mean he knew shit about supply chains and he certainly didn't know anything about steel refineries. I have worked in the auto industry for over 15 years as an engineer and have done purchasing for big and small automotive companies including steel frame components. Your ASE certified instructor didn't know what he was talking about in this case. Sounds to me like he was making shit up because he didn't like Japanese vehicles for whatever reason since it is wildly untrue that Japanese cars are made from recycled American cars. Talk to a materials engineer for correct information, not a guy who knows his way around a welding gun.

The hardness and brittleness of steel is a function of the grain structure and alloy of the steel among a few other things. It has nothing to do with whether it was recycled steel or created from ore. You could put both under a spectrometer or electron microscope and chances are you would be unable to tell any difference if they were made to the same spec.

Re: Republicans raped me in Brazil

[MercTech]

Some people just don't want to read history. Until they decided to spin doctor themselves in 1968; the Democrats had demonstrated over 100 years of being the party of Jim Crowe Laws, the "Yellow Peril", pushing through anti drug laws to provide ammunition for prosecuting black neighborhoods, and the stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan. (Look at pictures of the Democratic National Conventions in the 1920s and 1930s to see the Klan robes on the convention floor.)
        Democrat vs Republican is really old money elite families vs new money greedy business. Neither controlling faction really gives a crap about the majority of people or any country in particular.

Re:donald trump 2016

[MercTech]

"HE WILL MAKE AMERICA GRATE EVEN MORE THAN BEFORE!!! "

What type of grater are they using on the country as a whole? Is it large hole cheese shredding grater or is it a fine spice grater? What is the Guiness record for grating? What is the prize for being the most prolific grater?

Ok, yeah, I'm being pedantic. Spelling and punctuation do make a large difference in conveying meaning.

Re:donald trump 2016

[davester666]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grate

intransitive verb
2: to cause irritation : jar "a voice that grates on the nerves"

Keeping labor costs low

[sjbe]

Keeping your costs down can go a long way to controlling a market.

China doesn't even have to work too hard to keep their costs down because the main competition for rare earths mining is the USA which has some of the largest deposits and labor costs in the US are substantially higher than in China. Since you can't really automate things substantially AND the US has stiffer environmental regulations basically the US would have to subsidize mining operations to get the mines operational again. Probably in violation of WTO rules. For now it's uneconomical to mine them outside of China but if China tries to restrict supply I could see things changing for strategic reasons.