virke

[virke @virke7]

@herbertong @SpaceXAI All on now I think

[virke @virke7]

@elonmusk 🇺🇸🦌🍀☘️💯

[virke @virke7]

@KobeissiLetter 🐎🐎

[virke @virke7]

@elonmusk 💯😊

[virke @virke7]

@nicksortor Bookmarked cheers

[virke @virke7]

@AllegedlyDrew @nicksortor The heli pad tour was sick😎🏋️‍♂️ actually thought they were going to fly away, feels more like GI Joe is back good stuff 🇳🇿☘️🇺🇸

[virke @virke7]

@nicksortor Awesome to see, thank you

[virke @virke7]

@StockMKTNewz 🤹‍♂️☘️😎🏋️‍♂️

[virke @virke7]

@JulianUnlocked @NickGibbsIAG It’s called middle age 😉

[virke @virke7]

@teslaownersSV ⚡️👍

[virke @virke7]

@insiderwave Bracing for Monday 🐎

[virke @virke7]

@butala_aryan 🇺🇸🇳🇿🥳💫

[Ming @tslaming]

Three and a half years after setting the goal, Tesla’s rare-earth-free permanent-magnet motor has officially hit the pavement 🔥

When Tesla launched its steering-wheel-and-pedal-free Cybercab in Austin on September 3, it gave the public its first look at the new hardware in action. But going rare-earth-free doesn't mean building a motor without magnets.

The real challenge is keeping the efficiency and punch of a permanent-magnet design without using the rare elements that usually give them their strength.

Elon Musk noted that the new design preserves full driving range. EPA filings list a single three-phase AC permanent-magnet motor rated at 163 kW (about 219 hp). Alongside that rating, Tesla claims the complete drive unit is 18% smaller, 25% lighter, and more efficient than comparable high-performance EV drive units.

Hitting those numbers in a smaller footprint defies conventional motor design. Rare-earth neodymium magnets act like an engineering cheat code—they pack tremendous magnetic energy density into a tiny space.

Everyday alternatives like ceramic ferrite are cheap and abundant, but their magnetic energy density is roughly 7 to 10 times lower. Simply swapping materials usually leaves you with a motor that is bulky, heavy, and underpowered.

Getting around that trade-off takes a motor designed as a complete system. Shaping the magnetic field, packing more copper into the windings, and increasing rotational speed can help recover performance from weaker magnets. But one of the most powerful opportunities lies in the rotor itself: make the shape of its steel contribute more of the turning force.

🧲 Letting steel shape do the heavy lifting

Instead of relying solely on magnetic pull, this design leans into reluctance torque. Engineers stamp carefully shaped slots into the rotor’s stacked steel sheets. When the outer coils generate a rotating magnetic field, the rotor naturally twists to align the steel along the path of easiest magnetic flow. This geometry produces a substantial share of the turning force on its own, reducing the workload on the permanent magnets.

📐 Focusing the magnetic field

Because weaker magnets produce less flux, you cannot afford to waste any of it. Analysts suggest Tesla may be using a Halbach array—arranging magnets in specific orientations so their fields reinforce each other on the working side and cancel out on the back. This focuses magnetic energy right across the narrow air gap where the rotor meets the stator, pulling maximum torque out of lower-grade materials.

⚡ Hairpin copper packing

Traditional motors use bundles of round wire, leaving empty gaps like stacked logs. Tesla relies on precision-bent rectangular copper bars known as hairpins. Packing flat bars together reduces wasted space, lowers electrical resistance, and fits more current-carrying copper into a compact volume. The trade-off is thermal: at high speeds, alternating current effects can increase electrical losses, quickly turning that extra copper into unwanted heat.

❄️ Higher speeds and active cooling

Power equals torque multiplied by rotational speed. If your magnets generate less raw torque, you can make up the difference by spinning the motor faster and gearing that speed down to the wheels. Because spinning faster generates concentrated heat, effective cooling and lubrication become essential to protect the windings, preserve insulation, and keep power consistent over long highway runs.

Yet peak power is only half the equation. For an autonomous taxi designed to run all day, every watt-hour saved buys more paid miles between charging stops—or allows the vehicle to carry a smaller, cheaper battery pack. As an illustration, a 5% reduction in energy use per mile delivers roughly 5.3% more range from the exact same battery capacity. How this motor performs across stop-and-go city traffic, highway cruising, and light loads will ultimately decide the Cybercab's true operating cost.

Phasing out rare earths tackles three core strategic goals:
⚡ Slashing raw material and manufacturing expenses
🏭 Unlocking faster production scaling by clearing mineral bottlenecks
🌐 Insulating the supply chain from geopolitical shocks

That supply vulnerability is no longer theoretical. China refines over 90% of the world's magnet rare earths and has already enforced strict export controls on critical heavy elements. That supply squeeze has already surfaced inside Tesla, directly disrupting production plans for the Optimus humanoid robot.

Validating this motor in the Cybercab offers a clear roadmap to de-risk high-volume manufacturing. While compact robotic actuators in Optimus still depend on the extreme magnetic density of rare earths, stripping those minerals out of passenger vehicles reduces internal competition for scarce supplies.

At the same time, a lighter, cheaper drive unit directly lowers both the vehicle build cost and the electricity consumed per trip. Those savings feed straight into the single metric that defines the robotaxi business: cost per mile.

Cybercab didn't just hit the road without a steering wheel and pedals. It proved that Tesla is actively engineering its way around critical mineral bottlenecks—scaling autonomous transit entirely on its own terms.

[virke @virke7]

@Alexs_jame Truth will win 🏅

[Sawyer Merritt @SawyerMerritt]

Tesla has just shared the 4K version of the Cybercab's unboxed manufacturing process from last week's launch event.

The line is designed so that one Cybercab can roll off the production line every 10 seconds, with a long term goal of ~5 seconds.

[Race 🕊️ @multiplanet1]

Elon Musk tried to sell Tesla to Apple during the darkest period in the company's history.

Tim Cook refused to take the meeting.

It was 2017. The Model 3 was in what Elon called "manufacturing hell." Tesla was weeks from bankruptcy. The production line was so broken they built cars in a tent in the parking lot. Elon was sleeping on the factory floor because going home meant admitting there was a life outside the crisis.

In that moment he picked up the phone and called Apple. Not to collaborate. Not to partner. To surrender. To hand over the company he had poured every dollar and every year of his life into. He offered it for one tenth of its current value. Roughly $60 billion.

Tim Cook wouldn't even take the call.

The man who was desperate enough to sell his life's work was told he wasn't worth a conversation. Apple, the company that had never built a car, decided that the company that was building the future of transportation wasn't worth 30 minutes of their CEO's time.

Tesla survived. The Model 3 shipped. The production hell ended. Tesla is now worth more than the next nine largest automakers combined. Apple still hasn't built a car.

The company that refused to buy Tesla for $60 billion watched it become worth $800 billion. The man who was desperate enough to sell watched the company he almost gave away become the most valuable automaker on earth.

Tim Cook's refusal to take a phone call is the most expensive "no" in the history of business. And somewhere in that story is a man on a factory floor who was ready to give up everything and was told he wasn't even worth a meeting.

[virke @virke7]

@elonmusk 🇺🇸🇳🇿💫

[EarnFormation 🇿🇦 @EarnFormation]

Tesla is on a roll!

[virke @virke7]

Amazing work 🤩🦌🥳🤗🐠🐠🐠

[virke @virke7]

Watch Tesla’s Cybercab Launch Event From Today (full replay) https://t.co/7d9l8lfgkO via @YouTube