Technician An Tran assembles a motor at Conifer in Sunnyvale, Calif. – Ian Bates for WSJ
What if there were a way for the world to break its dependence on China’s rare earths, which the country has repeatedly used as a way to retaliate during trade wars? That’s the promise of new kinds of electric motors—the main place those rare earths are needed—that don’t require them, at all. A new startup called Conifer, which has unveiled a cheap, easily manufactured motor using magnets made from everyday iron is particularly interesting.
Conifer technical lead Yateendra Deshpande spent years helping design some of the world’s most advanced electric motors, including the ones powering Lucid Motors luxury cars. He has worked at Apple on its ill-fated car project. His co-founder, Ankit Somani, worked on data-center designs at Oracle and Google.
Together, they launched Conifer to tackle a potentially massive market: the need for billions of smaller motors to drop in existing machinery and to help electrify the currently gas-powered transportation fleets that are the dominant transportation mode for billions of people.
“There was a lot of energy going in the battery space, but not nearly enough in electric powertrains and electric motors,” says Somani, the company’s chief executive. “We wanted to rethink it from the ground up to see if we can come up with something far better.”
Conifer CEO Ankit Somani wanted to focus on cost, simplicity and sourcing. – Ian Bates for WSJ
Conifer, based in Silicon Valley, had to be hyper-focused on cost, simplicity and sourcing. Its solution was taking a design found in high-end hybrid supercars, then scaling down the size and bill of materials. Instead of those rare-earth magnets, its motors can use permanent magnets based on plain old iron.
What they’re doing is risky—the technology they’re playing with hasn’t been used in applications like this before, because historically it’s been hard to manufacture. Iron magnets, meanwhile, haven’t delivered enough power. But if they get the combination of cost and manufacturability right, their motor has the potential to become a go-to low-cost power plant for countless applications.
For makers of everything from EVs to robots, it’s the dream: an affordable, easy-to-manufacture electric motor that can be made entirely from materials found within most country’s borders. It’s tariff-proof tech. And now that China controls 90% of the world’s supply of rare-earth minerals, which serve as magnets in most motors and other electronics, it’s also an imperative.
I don’t have an engineering degree and most of you don’t either, so bear with me a moment—we’re about to get electromagnetical.
Typical electric motors are “radial flux”: a coil of copper wire snaking around a central shaft to which magnets are attached. When electricity is applied, the magnetic field in the copper wire is at a right angle to the shaft, and it starts to spin. If this sounds like that home experiment that you or your kids did with a copper wire and a steel nail, you get the idea.
Conifer’s motors, by contrast, are “axial flux.” They consist of a sandwich of steel plates, some stationary while others, attached to the shaft, are free to spin. Magnets sit on these plates, and the magnetic field is parallel to the shaft.
Conifer motors take a design found in high-end hybrid supercars and scale down the size and bill of materials. – Ian Bates for WSJ
Axial-flux motors date back centuries, just like their radial-flux counterparts. But modern ones work much better because we now have fast-switching power electronics that flip current on and off hundreds of times a second, smoothly adjusting that frequency as they spin slower and faster.
Axial-flux motors are harder to manufacture, and generally require a level of precision and software control that has kept them from widespread adoption, says James Edmondson, research director at emerging-technology analysis firm IDTechEx. They are starting to show potential, however.
Typically, both types of motors require magnets made from a blend of rare-earth elements: Neodymium might make up the magnet’s bulk while dysprosium could help it survive high speeds and temperatures.
But the Conifer engineers saw an opportunity with the axial-flux design: By using a greater mass of magnets, placed farther out on the spinning plates, and spinning those plates at a higher speed than is typical, Conifer has managed to use weaker iron-based magnets, says Deshpande, the company’s technical co-founder.
Conifer’s first, modest goal: to create a drop-in replacement for existing motors that go into electric, Vespa-like scooters. The company has already also developed several sizes of motors that could fit other machines, from HVAC systems to home electronics. The tech could scale up to power an EV. A small but highway-ready EV powered by Conifer’s motors could happen within four years, Deshpande says.
Lyra Energy aims to build the Tesla of two-wheelers for the developing world—that is, high-end and supported by its own charging network. The Los Angeles-based startup is using Conifer’s motors.
“Supply-chain flexibility is always something that is of value, especially as we start to scale the business,” says Lyra CEO Criswell Choi. “Longer term, I think with Conifer there is an opportunity to reduce the cost of the system, especially if it’s less dependent on rare earths.”
The worldwide market for the kind of vehicles Lyra is rolling out, first in Indonesia, is massive. In Asia alone, 45 million units are sold every year, and the global market for two-wheelers is projected to grow to $218 billion by 2029, according to a 2023 report from McKinsey.
Conifer’s in-wheel motors were comparable in price to traditional ones, says Choi. And they came with an added bonus: They were actually 20% more efficient than conventional ones, with a potential corresponding increase in vehicle range.
This same motor technology could be scaled up to power four-wheeled EVs, but there’s a limit to how much power it can provide without rare-earth magnets.
Conifer motors are axial flux, unlike typical radial-flux electric motors. – Ian Bates for WSJ
Using Conifer’s motors would also require a change in EV design. Most EVs have a centralized electric motor that transmits power to wheels. Conifer’s motors live in the wheels. Building EVs with in-wheel motors has long been a dream for some automotive designers, since it could mean overall improvements in efficiency and traction.
Making so many changes at once—a new kind of motor, a new kind of powertrain—isn’t something established EV makers can undertake anytime soon. But startups might seize the opportunity, especially if the alternative is facing tariff-caused cost increases.
While axial-flux and rare-earth-free motors have to date represented only a tiny fraction of the market, Conifer’s motors—or a similar design from a competitor—could become competitive, says Edmondson. Conifer’s simplified manufacturing process doesn’t involve metal stamping, and uses a copper-winding process inspired by the battery industry. That means finding skilled labor, which can be scarce, isn’t an issue.
If manufacturers are willing to ditch the design that’s dominated for over a century, there is a growing number of alternatives for them—even one based on a concept from Benjamin Franklin. Add in new kinds of batteries free of other elements with supply chains dominated by China, plus domestic manufacturing of microchips and the growing ranks of American EV startups, and you can start to see a future in which transportation could be fully made in the U. S.—or at least North America.
Write to Christopher Mims at christopher.mims@wsj.com
