141–150 of 919 posts
The wind is just blowing back towards internal combustion for the moment. A couple years and they will shift again. Killing the whole research project would be dumb. Killing current models makes some sense.
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> China decides they shouldn't be allowed access to any more rare earths This is a common misunderstanding. There are plenty of alternative locations to mine rare earth minerals, particularly Australia. China cornered the market because it's a high pollution low margin business. If geopolitical concerns cut off access to Chinese sources, alternatives will be developed.
There are also non rare earth magnets being explored. Niron - Iron nitride - magnets and ultrasonic compaction and other tech that wasn't feasible a while back are now becoming very practical. Japan could probably get to a dominant place with a solid research program, it'd give them a huge advantage for EVs and other motors.
I live in a top EV market, Norway. ICE cars have been planned out for years now, and something like 96% of all new cars in Norway were EV last year. Basically, if you plan on keeping selling ICE cars, you're removing yourself from the market here. There's no future for new personal ICE cars here. I figure most other countries will be the same.
Norway is a very special case in that it has massive hydro energy resources and nobody lives there.
Their hydro energy company is an aluminum company company, they have so much slack power they export it refining bauxite.
It is worth repeating solar panels covering an area about the size of NH generate enough power to supply all current entire US energy needs.
OTOH, it really looks like Toyota is Goldilocks. Most companies invested too much too early and had to write off a substantial amount, but Toyota is rolling into 2027 with a small but nice selection of EV's. Over 25% of vehicles sold world-wide were electric in 2025, and that percentage is steadily increasing. So VW & Ford were "too hot", Honda is looking like "too cold" and Toyota might be the "just right" of the th…
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But isn't Japan deeply screwed if they can't drastically cut their dependence on oil imports?
Also going to suffer a demographic crunch, having fewer jobs in more advanced technology would suit well with a shrunk labour force.
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Mining isn't the only bottleneck with rare earths. There also the processing, which is an industry China has monopolized through sustained investments over decades. They have also improved processing efficiency through investments in technology. It's going to take a while for anyone else to catch up.
> There also the processing, which is an industry China has monopolized through sustained investments over decades. I don't think this is the right way to characterize it. China invested when other countries didn't, but they didn't monopolize the market, they have no moat beyond expertise and some tech advancement that could be replicated easily enough. The only moat they have is related perseverance and other countr…
"Here, Honda is setting itself up for failure on the second disruption sweeping the automotive industry: the software-defined vehicle (SDV), which has core capabilities that can be upgraded and improved over time." I'll pay triple for a non software defined vehicle that doesn't track me and can't be touched by the dealer once I purchase it. My one SDV (Tesla) is still on FSD from 2023 because the newer versions are t…
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Norway is a very special case in that it has massive hydro energy resources and nobody lives there.
> hydro energy resources What is a hydro energy resource, a river? Don't lots of countries have rivers? (If we're talking about hydroelectric power plants they've chosen to build, that's not exactly a resource -- and other countries could choose to build those too, right?)
A river winding along a flat plain is not a hydro energy resource. A river in the same valley as your capital city is not a hydro energy resource.
"Here, Honda is setting itself up for failure on the second disruption sweeping the automotive industry: the software-defined vehicle (SDV), which has core capabilities that can be upgraded and improved over time." I'll pay triple for a non software defined vehicle that doesn't track me and can't be touched by the dealer once I purchase it. My one SDV (Tesla) is still on FSD from 2023 because the newer versions are t…
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Japan is the only other country besides China and Korea that produces magnets of high quality (higher in fact than the Chinese), they just don't do the volume. But there is absolutely no doubt that they could scale up if they wanted to. They're just more expensive, but not even that much.
India is looking to produce 6000 tonnes of NdFeB magnets per year with the first batch coming out in mid 2026. This is great news because India has large rare earth reserves and are producing using the full supply chain of ore to oxide to magnets. 6000 tonnes is like 3% of the global supply but that’s not bad for year one.