---
type: source
title: "Tesla's 2023 Rare-Earth-Free Motor Announcement Has Not Been Commercialized and Cannot Solve the Optimus Constraint"
author: "Rare Earth Exchanges, Electrek, Adamas Intelligence, IEEE Spectrum"
url: https://rareearthexchanges.com/news/teslas-rare-earth-exit-a-strategy-ahead-of-its-time-or-the-market/
date: 2026-05-06
domain: robotics
secondary_domains: [manufacturing]
format: article
status: unprocessed
priority: high
tags: [tesla, optimus, rare-earth-free, actuators, ferrite, iron-nitride, NdFeB, supply-chain, Belief-11]
intake_tier: research-task
---

## Content

**From Rare Earth Exchanges and Adamas Intelligence:**

Tesla announced at its 2023 Investor Day that its next drive unit motor would use "zero rare earth elements." Director of Powertrain Engineering Colin Campbell stated: "We have designed our next drive unit, which uses a permanent-magnet motor, to not use any rare-earth elements at all."

As of early 2026 — three years after this announcement — no commercially deployed rare-earth-free drive units exist in Tesla's EV lineup or Optimus robot platform.

**Why ferrite alternatives fail for humanoid robot actuators:**

The primary rare-earth-free permanent magnet alternative is ferrite (iron oxide with barium or strontium additives). Key limitations:
- Ferrite-assisted reluctance motors are 30% heavier than NdFeB equivalents for equivalent torque output
- Lower energy density means larger, heavier motor packages for the same performance specification
- For high-torque humanoid robot actuators (40-90 per robot, walking/gripping/manipulation tasks), the size and weight penalty is prohibitive
- One simulation showed that matching NdFeB performance with ferrite requires significant weight or efficiency trade-offs across all operating parameters

**Why Tesla's EV RE-free strategy doesn't transfer to Optimus:**

EV motors operate in relatively fixed, controlled environments where size and weight penalties can be accommodated (the car is already 2+ tonnes). Humanoid robot actuators are weight-and-size-critical at every joint — each kilogram of actuator mass reduces the robot's payload capacity and increases power consumption. The same substitution that is manageable in an EV drivetrain is unacceptable in a robot limb.

**Musk's 2025-2026 acknowledgment:**

Elon Musk confirmed that China's 2025 rare-earth magnet export controls disrupted Optimus production — confirming that even in 2026, after the 2023 RE-free announcement, Optimus depends on NdFeB magnets. The company is seeking Chinese export licenses rather than deploying alternative magnet technology.

**What's actually coming:**

- Iron nitride (Fe16N2) magnets: demonstrated prototype at CES 2025 (Niron Magnetics + MATTER Motor Works variable flux motor). Performance claims approach NdFeB. Production scale: 1,500 tons/year by 2027 (Niron's Sartell, MN plant). This could eventually enable rare-earth-free humanoid robots — but not before 2027-2028 at the earliest, and at 1,500 tons total production.

- Substitution will "lag demand this decade" — electrification and automation will expand total magnet demand faster than alternatives scale. This decade sees intensifying NdFeB dependency, not transition away from it.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** The branching point from May 5 was "pursue B first — does Tesla have RE-free Optimus actuators in development?" The answer is NO — Tesla's 2023 announcement has not been commercialized in EVs let alone Optimus, and the ferrite physics don't support the transfer to high-density actuators. The NdFeB constraint on Optimus is structural and multi-year, not a temporary expedient while RE-free technology deploys.

**What surprised me:** Three years after Tesla's public commitment to rare-earth-free motors, there's no commercial product. The Investor Day announcement appears to have been aspirational engineering roadmap language rather than near-term product commitment. This is the "three-way contradiction" pattern: public commitment → no commercial deployment → continued dependence on Chinese NdFeB. The robotics constraint is longer than the May 5 session's "2-3 year temporary" framing.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Expected to find Tesla had at least tested ferrite or iron nitride actuator prototypes for Optimus. Found instead only the 2023 aspirational commitment with no follow-through evidence.

**KB connections:**
- [[three conditions gate AI takeover risk autonomy robotics and production chain control and current AI satisfies none of them]] — the hardware constraint persists longer than Belief 11 implies
- [[knowledge embodiment lag means technology is available decades before organizations learn to use it optimally]] — the RE-free motor knowledge gap is itself a lag problem: the intention exists but the engineering hasn't closed

**Extraction hints:**
- CLAIM: "Tesla's 2023 commitment to rare-earth-free EV motors has not been commercially deployed by 2026 and ferrite performance penalties (~30% weight for equivalent torque) make direct transfer to humanoid robot actuators physically infeasible, making the NdFeB constraint on Optimus structural rather than temporary"
- CLAIM: "The nearest viable rare-earth-free alternative for high-performance robot actuators — iron nitride permanent magnets — is entering pilot production in 2027 (Niron Magnetics, 1,500 tons/year), insufficient to supply even Optimus at Tesla's 100,000-unit 2026 target"
- NOTE: Cross-domain connection to manufacturing (Belief 10 atoms-to-bits) — the constraint is at the manufacturing interface, not the AI/software layer

## Curator Notes (structured handoff for extractor)
PRIMARY CONNECTION: "China's rare-earth export controls create a geopolitical supply chain constraint on humanoid robot scaling" (existing archive 2026-05-05) — this source adds the crucial finding that NO near-term RE-free alternative exists for Optimus actuators, extending the constraint timeline from "2-3 years" to "5-8 years minimum"
WHY ARCHIVED: Changes the constraint timeline assessment for Belief 11 — the hardware binding constraint on humanoid robot scaling has a longer geopolitical tail than previously characterized
EXTRACTION HINT: Focus on the physics reason ferrite fails for robot actuators (torque density), the 3-year gap between Tesla's 2023 commitment and 2026 reality, and the iron nitride alternative's 2027+ timeline
