Live data from Hacker News

Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

insideevs.com

181–190 of 200 posts

Re: Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

#181
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are any other manufacturers pushing as hard here? Why would they. Most of those things are not sustainable. You don't want alluminium wires in your car.

I would assume those "high voltage conductors" are more like rigid bus bars, and not flexible wires. Edit: Judging by the picture on this article [1] I am wrong. [1]: https://hackaday.com/2022/01/13/exploring-tesla-model-s-high...

Tesla does use traditional stranded copper too, but the aluminum I referenced is indeed a rigid bus bar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35014013

Re: Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

#182
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You almost made me spill my coffee. Tesla still CANNOT get their auto wipers to work correctly. This has been a feature on a Mazda 3 I had in 2007 and it worked flawlessly.

Fwiw my wipers work fine. There were a couple patches where “auto” was a bit eager to engage but that’s been solved for years. There are also 3 “non-auto” settings that work just like any other car.

Idk what to tell you.

I was interested in buying model Y. Rented a 2022. Wipers came on at dawn with 0 rain/snow. The next day wipers were not coming on during a snow storm.

Quick search showed that this is a common complaint among owners.

"Normal" car has wiper settings in the stalk. I don't want to crash trying to change wiper settings in the rain.

Re: Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese people are brought up in an environment that tells them to support the CCP and where vocal dissent is punished. Their centrally controlled media ecosystem is rigged against them being able to think and speak clearly on this issue. They have been the primary victims of the CCP since its inception. Also, Chinese people aren't a monolith. If you sorted Chinese people by how jingoistic they are I would probably d…

I’ve lived in China and have friends there. People there aren’t told to love the CCP. They all have gripes about it like any people would have for their government. It’s not like North Korea. They do not want to overthrow it because the country is stable and their lives are improving. You underestimate the power the people have over the government. When Chinese are pissed off, they will go on the streets and protest…

The CCP will allow a certain level of protest as a release valve but to extend that to the claim that the people can just casually "overthrow" an authoritarian state when push comes to shove is not right. If it reached a boiling point the tanks would roll out and the protesters would be killed or imprisoned.

> I’ve lived in China and have friends there. People there aren’t told to love the CCP.

Again, managed dissent. The real dissenters are in prison or worse.

> It’s not like North Korea.

I already said there's worse alternatives than the CCP. That doesn't absolve it from being an authoritarian dictatorship.

> I find it hilarious when people say they love Chinese people but hate the CCP. Either they’re disingenuous because they dislike both or they don’t understand China.

I already explained this to you, so either you are being disingenuous or you are determined to have a monologue. I am ending it here because this is a low value conversation.

Re: Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

#184
post #160
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elon Musk has a long history of misleading people about Tesla. Whether it's embellishment, overestimation of what they can accomplish, or outright lies is up for debate, but the fact remains that they habitually over-promise and under-deliver. This is about as silly as people who think he’s the messiah. He’s clearly over promised on many things, but he’s also delivered on a lot. And spacex motto is turning the impo…

Some people call that fraud

If missing a forecast was illegal then literally every executive in the world would be in jail. Elon isn't especially bad at forecasting, in fact he may be much better than average, but it's hyper focused on every time. Every time Larry Ellison at Oracle misses a forecast it doesn't become a talking point that's repeated literally a billion times every time someone mentions a computer.

Re: Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

#185
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see why that’s relevant with the topic of reducing consumption of certain rare elements. Then failing at some of the goals shouldn’t detract from what has been accomplished. And if the end result is just electric cars that don’t use rara elements I think that’s a good thing, even without robotaxis

I assume that the relevance is that Tesla's claims don't count for much until they actually deliver. Elon Musk has a long history of misleading people about Tesla. Whether it's embellishment, overestimation of what they can accomplish, or outright lies is up for debate, but the fact remains that they habitually over-promise and under-deliver. I consider him and his companies to be completely untrustworthy. He could b…

He's literally already delivered motors without rare earth elements (for other purposes) in production Teslas for nearly a decade now. He's already done what he's said he's going to do, he's just going to do it more.

Re: Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You don't want alluminium wires in your car. Why not?

I assume, for the same reason you don't want them in your house. It expands differently from copper as it warms, and the connections can loosen. If Tesla has switched to aluminum I imagine they've found a way to fix that. Possibly by making the entire electrical system out of aluminum, so that it all expands the same way, or possibly a connector designed to avoid that.

The primary reason you don't want aluminum in your house is that homegamers will improperly do repairs, primarily replacing devices (receptacles, switches) with ones that are not rated CO/ALR rated. I doubt that failure will be as likely in the cars.

Properly terminated, there is no problem with aluminum wiring in your house. As another replier mentioned, most houses do have aluminum wiring in the run to the house and the run from the meter to the panel, and sometimes in the larger runs like stove and dryer.

It's also worth noting that the newer aluminum formulas like Southwire SIMpul, are not like the old aluminum like was installed in my house in the early '70s. But, buyers are still gunshy from the '70s, so copper is generally preferred

Re: Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both the UK and America targeted their bombs at civilians. This childish good vs. evil boomer narrative needs to die

Civilian casualty is the lowest-common-denominator. Right now, China is under scrutiny for current human rights abuses and a potential domestic ethnic-cleansing a-la third Reich. That's a slightly different situation than indiscriminate civilian casualty.

Honestly the whole Xinjang issue seems to be a red herring used by the West for their own purposes. They never cared about the plight of Muslims before (eg. military adventures/regime change in the middle east, support of apartheid Israel and suppressing the human rights of Palestinians), why would you expect them to actually care about Uyghur Muslims other than what this group can do to advance western fake moral outrage?

Re: Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But battery research is ongoing from a century at this point, we can't possibly think that Tesla just came out of nowhere and thought a solution nobody considered before such as using less rare elements. It is most certainly a trade off and I'm not seeing where the cons are mentioned. Moreover, lithium-ion batteries have by far the most efficienty energy density, so what is tesla getting rid of, most certainly not li…

Every sentence of this is wrong. Disclaimer: I am no fanboy of Tesla; I think Tesla's lunch will be eaten by BYD, either alone or together with other Chinese EV manufacturers, in part because Tesla has been resting on its laurels for so long (still selling the model S!); but facts are facts. > But battery research is ongoing from a century... Tesla's claim is about motors, not batteries. Tesla has implemented solutio…

> I think Tesla's lunch will be eaten by BYD, either alone or together with other Chinese EV manufacturers, in part because Tesla has been resting on its laurels for so long (still selling the model S!);

The tech and featues in a Tesla are far beyond what BYD is even close to delivering.

BYD's growth has been nothing close to Tesla's

Tesla has around four times the net income of BYD despite BYD selling three times as many cars

Telsa is making industry defining changes to manufacturing that BYD hasn't even started on

Telsa is deploying more than double the battery capacity as BYD

Tesla is far more vertically integrated than BYD

Not sure how any of this is resting on laurels or at all a sign that BYD is at risk of being a threat

Re: Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civilian casualty is the lowest-common-denominator. Right now, China is under scrutiny for current human rights abuses and a potential domestic ethnic-cleansing a-la third Reich. That's a slightly different situation than indiscriminate civilian casualty.

Honestly the whole Xinjang issue seems to be a red herring used by the West for their own purposes. They never cared about the plight of Muslims before (eg. military adventures/regime change in the middle east, support of apartheid Israel and suppressing the human rights of Palestinians), why would you expect them to actually care about Uyghur Muslims other than what this group can do to advance western fake moral ou…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN