frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Renault: Electric motors with no rare earths

https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/magazine/energy-and-powertrains/all-about-electric-motors-with-no-rare-earths/
69•bestouff•1h ago

Comments

dmitrygr•42m ago
Seems to be: replace permanent Nd magnet with an electromagnet.
dyauspitr•21m ago
So does it consume significantly more electricity?
cyberax•16m ago
Not really. The excitation power is a small fraction of the total.

The problem is that it makes the rotor far less mechanically robust and also heavier. That's why these motors are less powerful.

cyberax•18m ago
They even use regular carbon brushes to supply power to the magnet. Munro has a teardown video for a similar motor for Nissan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFmp9ODkCA8
Onavo•31m ago
The main difference between this and your typical AC induction motors (also magnet free) is that this is a DC motor so you need a commutator. Your AC induction magnet free motors are very similar to drone motors in that you don't have any electrically active moving parts like slip rings and commutators. But for AC induction there will be a slight lag (known as slip).
maxerickson•17m ago
They are electronically commutated. The stator field is more or less variable AC.
bgarbiak•30m ago
BMW also makes rare-earths-free motors for their EVs and - at this very moment - theirs are far more advanced. They offer almost twice the power (up to 300kW vs 160kW) and are on a 800v architecture.
PedroBatista•19m ago
The cheapest EV model Renault sells is around €20K, the cheapest BMW EV is around €65K.

It's safe to say the companies are not in the market bracket, no?

alephnerd•26m ago
Mentioned in another HN thread [0]:

They're also used by Nissan [1], BMW [2], and Indian EVs [3].

European firms like ZF, Valeo, MAHLE, and Schaffler along with British firms like AEM have been working with Indian manufacturers for a couple years now to integrate supply chains for mass-producing EESMs.

EESMs as well as the larger OEM story played a role in helping land the EU-India and the UK-India FTAs because the supply chains for French+Italian (Renault, Stellantis), Japanese (Toyota, Honda, Suzuki), Korean (Hyundai-Kia), and Indian automotive manufacturers merged.

On the other hand, EESM EVs aren't a thing here in North America nor China yet.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48510402

[1] - https://leandesign.com/nissan-ariya-magnet-free-motor-teardo...

[2] - https://www.bmwblog.com/2025/02/20/bmw-gen6-electric-motors-...

[3] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-revs-up-alternate-...

delfugal•23m ago
How soon to see rare-earth-free paired with CATL Sodium batteries? Seems a price war, range war is imminent.
alephnerd•22m ago
Unlikely.

EESMs are primarily manufactured by European OEMs (ZF, MAHLE, Schaffler, AEM) and their Indian JV partners (Sona Comstar, Sterling, and the India JVs of the OEMs listed). Both have been blocked via export controls from accessing battery tech from China over the past few years, and a major reason for the push for EESMs was for an ex-China supply chain, especially after China began export controlling rare earths to the EU [6].

Additonally, Chinese and American EVs tend to use PMSMs unlike European and now Indian EVs. Also, the EU is cracking down on automotive exports (cars and OEMs) from non-FTA states as part of the EU Industrial Accelerator Act (which btw has made China go ballistic [2][3][4][5]).

On the other hand, they will most likely use Japanese or Korean solid-state batteries as Idemetsu Kosan is in the process of mass producing them [0][1] as is LG [7].

[0] - https://www.chiyodacorp.com/en/projects/solidelectrolytefaci...

[1] - https://battery-tech.net/battery-markets-news/idemitsu-kosan...

[2] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1361926.shtml

[3] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1362200.shtml

[4] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202605/1362161.shtml

[5] - https://www.ft.com/content/5903318c-319b-426e-b05d-062f7620f...

[6] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/eu-lawmakers-rebuke-chin...

[7] - https://blog.lgchem.com/en/2026/03/25_solid_state_battery/

willXare•23m ago
"Replace the magnet with a controllable magnet" is probably the most automotive-engineering sentence possible.
pfannl•11m ago
Also known as: “we removed the rare earths and added software.”
derac•22m ago
https://youtu.be/FHufjrP0xDI?is=xmFQrXGa1dBHM67I

This is a helpful explanation of what this technology is and looks like. (Munro)

cogman10•14m ago
Could be wrong, but AFAIK the CATL Sodium batteries haven't yet hit LFP pricing.

You are unlikely to see a vehicle with sodium batteries until after that happens, and it needs to be significantly less than LFPs as you Na batteries have more weight per Wh. I believe they also have a shorter lifespan (but not NMC short). Edit correction, looks like CATL is promising 15000 cycles, which is much longer than LFPs which usually come in at 7000 to 10000.

It seems far more likely to me that if the Na prices tank, you'll probably first see them deployed as grid and home battery solutions.

Mexico's president meeting with Ben Horowitz, from a16z

https://twitter.com/Claudiashein/status/2065497274893905938
1•aylmao•1m ago•0 comments

UnpredictaBench: A Benchmark for Evaluating Distributional Randomness in LLMs

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.06622
1•matt_d•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Pilang – A scripting language and VM written in C

https://github.com/rolandbrake/pilang
1•rolandbrake•3m ago•0 comments

The Mysterious Woman Behind the Nord Stream Explosion

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-explosion-pipeline-9a109da9
2•nradov•10m ago•0 comments

Glacial Valley

https://github.com/deedy/glacial-valley
1•tanelpoder•10m ago•0 comments

Linear Algebra Kernels for the Age of Research

https://www.gpumode.com/news/linear-algebra-kernels-age-of-research
1•matt_d•14m ago•0 comments

Russia builds up infrastructure near Europe's border to deploy over 100k troops

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/10/8038671/
1•Bender•16m ago•0 comments

From a Single File to an MCP Server: Six Rewrites of My Own Harness

https://pub.towardsai.net/from-a-single-file-to-an-mcp-server-six-rewrites-of-my-own-harness-74b4...
2•tacoda•18m ago•0 comments

Agentifying Agent Assessment for Openness, Standardization, and Reproducibility

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.13608
1•tcp_handshaker•23m ago•0 comments

Pink Cosmo Blueberries

https://www.baldorfood.com/product/blueberries/be3p-pink-cosmo-blueberries
1•mooreds•25m ago•0 comments

Why Tomatoes Are the Most Expensive They've Been in Four Decades [audio] [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUrIlUAo0kM
1•mooreds•26m ago•0 comments

What Do Engineers Mean When We Say "Taste"?

https://davegriffith.substack.com/p/what-do-engineers-mean-when-we-say
1•mikez302•26m ago•0 comments

Latent learning: episodic memory complements parametric learning

https://openreview.net/forum?id=RuWGeX5ZiB
1•matt_d•27m ago•0 comments

Erdős Problems and Speculations about the Power of AI Models

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbNctTQnVHI
1•maayank•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Agent Joe – a Rust only coding agent with no shell access

https://github.com/Kapperchino/agent-joe
1•kapperchino•30m ago•0 comments

I Think They [Anthropic] Are Lying to You [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfYsSFY4l18
5•salutis•32m ago•2 comments

Digg

https://digg.com/tech
2•ahmedfromtunis•32m ago•1 comments

I created a facet search over music composition (no AI)

https://monictheory.com
1•midi_finder•32m ago•1 comments

Ring Holders Club – NBA draft-and-SIM playoff run, plus a daily tactics puzzle

https://www.ringholders.club/
3•pipnonsense•32m ago•0 comments

Stackit – European Hyperscaler and Cloud Provider

https://stackit.com/en
1•tomrod•33m ago•0 comments

For People with Misophonia, Everyday Noises Can Be Agony

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/15/for-people-with-misophonia-everyday-noises-can-be-a...
1•fortran77•34m ago•0 comments

'Crisis averted' as experts confirm universe's expansion is accelerating

https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-highlights/crisis-averted-experts-confirm-universes-exp...
2•hhs•36m ago•0 comments

Espressif Modules

https://esp32.atomic14.com/modules/
1•iamflimflam1•36m ago•0 comments

N8ao – An efficient and visually pleasing implementation of SSAO

https://github.com/N8python/n8ao
1•modinfo•38m ago•0 comments

The World Computer Has Children

https://hari.computer/the-world-computer-has-children
1•andytratt•44m ago•0 comments

Astrology Is Scientifically Provable

https://astrologerapp.org/free-synastry
1•calamaridude•45m ago•3 comments

Cooling at the Speed of Light

https://cacm.acm.org/news/cooling-at-the-speed-of-light/
3•sohkamyung•45m ago•0 comments

Google's new remote attestation scheme is as terrible as old scheme

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/12/compelled-speech/
3•healsdata•45m ago•0 comments

Jane Yolen (1939–2026)

https://locusmag.com/2026/06/jane-yolen-1939-2026/
2•sohkamyung•45m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How are you designing human review for production AI agents?

2•willXare•46m ago•1 comments