Tata Motors and Mahindra & Mahindra have cumulatively claimed around Rs 246 crore under the central government's production-linked incentive scheme for the automobile and auto components industry, shared HD Kumaraswamy, Union minister for heavy industries, in January 2025.
Auto components include both mechanical and electronic parts, including motors and controllers, battery management system and the other components common to both internal combustion engine vehicles and electric ones like the vehicle body, wheels, axle and other paraphernalia.
Permanent magnets are used in motors, which are an indispensable component of electric vehicles. The ferrite permanent magnets are heavier and get more easily demagnetised than rare earth element (REE) magnets. A feature article, titled How to Build EV Motors Without Rare Earth Elements, published in the publication IEEE Spectrum on July 2, 2024, details the reasons for these phenomena.
Ferrite magnets invariably have lower performance than REE magnets, the article highlighted. “Even with a highly optimised design, a motor based on ferrite magnets will be considerably heavier — perhaps a third or more — if it is to achieve the same performance as a motor with rare earth magnets.”
There is a scientific reason for the higher dispensation to demagnetisation of ferrite magnets, the author of the article argued. “Non-REE magnets or ferrite magnets get easily demagnetised. Permanent magnets are good conductors of electricity. And when an electrical conductor moves in a magnetic field, which is what rotor magnets do while the motor is operating, currents are induced in it. These currents, which do not contribute to the torque, heat up the magnets and demagnetise them.”
REE magnets are made up of rare earth elements. These are 17 elements including lanthanides, scandium and yttrium. Owing to their high atomic number, they are placed towards the bottom of the periodic table. As opposed to their name, they are not rare in the earth’s crust. However, they are difficult to extract from their ores. REEs are considered strategically important by many countries, including India because of their wide applicability in sectors like EVs, wind energy, solar panels and telecommunications.
In China, which controls a majority of global REE supply chain, the State Council noted in 2010 that the country's rare earth industry was inflicting “intense harm to the ecological environment, resulting in vegetation loss and contamination of surface water, groundwater and agricultural land.”
The council attributed landslides and blocked rivers to the excessive mining of rare earth elements, according to Science News in January, 2023.
It is because of these geopolitical reasons and material properties of REEs that the EV manufacturing industry is exploring alternatives to REE-based permanent magnets. A few labs in India, like the Centre for Automotive Energy Materials at the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy & New Materials, are also working on this problem.
Some materials present promising alternatives to REE-based permanent magnets, the IEEE article stated. “High-silicon steel, renowned for its superior magnetic properties, emerges as a promising candidate for rotor construction, offering the potential to improve the magnetic efficiency of REE-free motors. Concurrently, using high-conductivity copper alloys or ultraconducting copper strands can greatly reduce electrical losses and improve overall performance.”