151: These Darn Youngsters – Evolving Electric Motor Design

Hey everybody on today’s episode of Still To Be Determined. We’re gonna be talking about how sometimes going back to first principles is the best way to find a new path. Welcome to Still to Be Determined as usual. I’m Sean Ferrell. I’m a writer. I write sci-fi. I write some stuff for kids, and I’m just generally curious about technology and luckily for me, my brother is Matt of undecided with Matt Ferrell.

You of course, are familiar with this channel because if you weren’t,

why should you be here? ,

yes. I don’t know how anybody would find us if it weren’t for the main channel. Matt, how you doing?

I’m doing pretty well. How about you? How’s your weekend?

It’s going okay. It’s, I, it feels like we haven’t had a new episode in 2023.

Is

that possible? We have, but it’s. But we recorded it. Did we enjoy recording it? Did we record it? We recorded it in 2022. Yeah, you’re right. We have, this is the first one we’ve recorded in the new year. . Yeah, so

here we are in the new year. We’re already toward the end of January, so it’s practically 2024.

So I’m just gonna say to everybody, happy 2025 . It’s been, uh, A fairly nice January so far. It’s a little hectic in different ways, but I’m mm-hmm. doing okay. One of the ways I’ll point out now, I was gonna save this to the end of the episode, but I’ll point it out now for anybody who’s curious about my writing.

Anybody who wants to support me as a writer or wants to check out something. I have my new book. I have an advanced copy of my next book, which is coming out in June. This is available for pre. You can find it wherever you find books. That includes even going to your public library if you don’t actually wanna buy the book, but you wanna make sure that there’s a copy on your library shelves, you can go there and request that they order it.

It’s available anywhere. So if you’re an Amazon customer, a local bookstore, customer bookshop.org is a favorite of mine. It is a way to support local bookstores through an Amazon type selling experience. So you go in and you. Actually select what local bookstore you want to have, fill your order, or bookshop.org will fill it themselves.

So all of those are great ways to, uh, find the book. It is the middle grade novel that I’ve been talking about for a while. It’s the story of a boy, a bunch of robots, some smugglers, and a lot of danger. So I hope people will enjoy it. Sean? Yes? I got one

question for you. . Where’s my copy? .

Your copy is not yet here.

This is the only one I’ve received so far. So, and this is a, the advanced readers copy. This will be the type that goes out to like books, book sellers and librarians school, school librarians, stuff like that. This will be the copy they see. And there are some actual changes between what I’m holding in my hand and what will be on the shelve.

For example, the illustrations in here are not the final illustrations, and there have been some minor changes in like, Some names, a few words here and there. Okay. So I wouldn’t want you to grab this copy and think I’ve got my copy. Your copy. It’s on its way, don’t worry. Okay, , it’s in the mail. So before we get into the discussion about Matt’s most recent episode, which is about a 17 year old who created a motor, which solved some questions around ways of avoiding rare earth metals.

Wanted to share a couple of comments. Our most recent episode. This is from our discussion in episode one 50 about wood batteries. This discussion seems so last year, man, I don’t even know why I’m bringing it up, but there was this from Cal Random who wrote on the subject of using trees for paper. , we need to quit that and can, if we start using hemp or cannabis stocks, one acre of either of those will replace 10 acres of pine trees.

Not to mention that the paper doesn’t yellow out or term brittle as quickly. He brings this up because the discussion around wood batteries included not only uses for wood, but mm-hmm. printing technologies. Literally printing batteries onto paper. So I think that that’s what caught cal’s eye. I thought it was just a nice reminder that there are lots of different ways to get the products that we are accustomed to.

Yeah. Including different fiber sources. Like cannabis or hemp. And then there was this comment from Dave McCracken who wrote In talking about technological change, I recall a statement from a sci-fi novel. People assume tomorrow will be like today, but tomorrow is already here. And it isn’t at all like yesterday.

I thought that was a very nice, that’s, that’s really nice, very nice mantra to, to keep in mind as we not only talk about these things on this channel, but. Kind of big picture as we move through our lives. I’ve recently had conversations with family members about change and technology and what it all means.

And this phrase actually kind of hit the the bullseye for me, and I’m gonna share it with those family members that I was talking to. So, as I mentioned, this episode is focused on Matt’s most recent, which is why this 17 year old’s electric motor is important. This episode dropped on January 17th, 2023, and there was a lot of discussion around the invention itself.

The point of the episode as Matt has so eloquently put it in the title of the, of the episode and in his lead in is it’s not just this 17 year old’s invention is important. Mm-hmm. . But why is it important? It is about the lead in to the invention itself and that being rare earth metals. There were comments like this from Joe Po, who wrote The issue of using rare earth elements for magnets is very polar.

Well done. Joe Po. Yes. Take up the hat to Joe Po.

Slow clap. You know, it’s every meme you can think of. Applause. Well done. Yes,

yes. . As far as the motor itself goes, part of the discussion of how Motors work is a reference to the squirrel cage. Which is what? Part of the motor is the squirrel cage man. It’s the, well, it’s

the part that holds

It’s, were you gonna say it’s the part that holds the squi? Yes. The hard part that was a squirrel that spins really fast and makes electricity. It’s the part that, it’s the wire cage that’s wound around the, the motor and it’s, it’s called the squirrel cage. And when we were pulling this together, it was like a rabbit hole.

We didn’t bother going down. I, I didn’t know. And so it’s like I didn’t bother going down the rabbit hole. So like when I was recording it and I was. Saying that part, I was like, I actually don’t know what the, why it’s called scroll pages. It seems so random. So I just mentioned it in the

video. Luckily for you, you’ve got viewers like Greg Chambers.

Thank you Greg, for jumping in and saying in 1889, Mihail, Dego Dub. Dub of Lasky. I probably slotted that name. Nine different ways. Yes. , Debra Olasky invented the wound rotor induction motor, which looked like a squirrel cage, and the name stuck. Tesla invented it pretty close to the same time independently and gets most of the credit because he had already had the patents.

But most physicists agree that it was actually invented by Dr. D. I’m not gonna say that name. Dr. D I

like that. Yeah. . Dr. Dini is

Squirrel Cage . So this comment from almost weekly report, I think really kind of hit the nail in the head for me about the importance of this video he wrote. Great to hear the story of a 17 year old making these huge impacts.

We too often herald young inventors and creators like Einstein, Edison, Tesla, and young engineers who were making things in their garages along. This is proof. They are still around. There’s lots of room for invention and innovation. So we have a 17 year old for a school project putting together something and saying, look, there’s an issue here.

The issue he was talking about was not nobody has yet seen my invention. The issue was there are things that are difficult to get. There are things that are hard to get and dangerous to get, depending on where they’re. , how do we avoid needing to get those things? Rare earth metals? The role of rare earth metals in the magnets that are included in the building of this kind of motor is the issue.

So let’s put aside the invention itself. The 17 year old, again, this is not to like, his accomplishment is incredibly impressive. Yes. And so for him to have received the. Reward that he got as the result of winning a contest, $75,000. Which, if he’s smart about it, I hope he applies that, like put that immediately into a college, a college fund for himself.

Get himself to a good school. Who’s to say that 10, 12 years from now he’s not doing something with the patent he might have on this and, and you know, he’ll be off and running and that’s terrific, but that. There is an issue that this invention highlights which is more important than the invention itself.

Yes. Rare earth metals. Yes. So do you wanna talk briefly about, like if you were to look at a list of the 10 things wrong with rare earth metals, just gimme your number one. What is the biggest one that you’re like, this is a big problem that we should avoid?

Well, I don’t know if it’s, I dunno if I’d look it that way.

It’s kind of. , rare earth elements are everywhere, but they’re in a very small quantity kind of everywhere. And so it’s hard to get enough of them. And because we’re going down the road to electrification for EVs and everything like that, we need an, we’re gonna, it’s like a hockey stick growth that we need, right?

For the amount of stuff. So if we stick with the technologies we have today, like the lithium mine batteries we use today, the types of motors we use in EVs today. It’s like the demand on the supply chain for rare earth elements, we’re not gonna be able to keep up. It’s like there’s not gonna be enough supply, which is gonna cause the cost to go skyrocket, which means these things will become more expensive to make and it’s just gonna be, it’s got like a, it’s gonna be really bad.

It’s just the, the, it’s not a sustainable future from that point of view. So that’s, to me is the, the lynchpin of trying to find another path that can, it’s, it’s the same reason why. It’s important to look at other battery technologies that are gonna be coming up over the course of the next decade because there’s a ton of batteries that are gonna be coming that don’t use lithium or don’t use cobalt.

Trying to change the supply chain so that we can actually achieve our goals for what we need for energy storage, what we need for the motors that are gonna go into our electric vehicles and wind turbines and whatever else we’re using for, uh, generating electricity. We need to be smarter about what we’re.

The technology we have today works great for today, but it’s not gonna be the best option 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road. So to me, that was the thing that was like, for me, what drew me to the story was that, right? I mean there’s, like you said, there’s 10, 12 other things you could focus on, but for me that was the motivating factor around the story.

So it sounds, if I’m interpreting you correctly, it’s about, that’s about. Combined with resource harvesting effectively, would it be because the idea is like it’s in such small quantities, to get enough together to be able to do the things that need to be done with it takes a long time and makes it more expensive.

So looking for alternatives.

I mean, to highlight one aspect of it, you typically aren’t mining for, you know, I need this specific rare earth element. Let’s just start digging holes looking for that element, because you’re finding a whole bunch of stuff. So like if you’re mining for copper, it’s not like you’re just looking for copper and chucking the rest away.

It’s like, oh, we got some copper, we got some manganese, we got, it’s like you’re, you’re, you’re filtering all these things out to get the different elements. So it’s like you, you’re mining. anyway, and some of these elements are in there, but it’s this, it’s one of those, it would reduce how much we have to mine for it, how much we have to look for it.

It’s gonna help for me, the thing I was focusing on was just the supply chain, the logistics, the costs, just the, the rarity

of it

is what we need to get away from, cuz we need to get as cheap as we can to make sure that this stuff can flourish across the the world. specifically to motors, you want them to be as efficient as they can, so it takes less electricity to run them.

So it’s kind of like a, do these two things go hand in hand on this specific story?

Is there an aspect of this that also impacts other technology? Like I believe you mentioned W wind turbines at one point. Mm-hmm. , is there something about this technology that works the other direction too? Because this is,

Effectively taking energy from a power source, like a battery into a motor to drive the motor is where this invention would play a part. Does it work the other direction as well? Could this be in a wind turbine and effectively help generate power in a way that would also avoid all the need for rare earth metals?

I mean,

if you think about a motor, You put electricity in and it turns the little thing and makes something move. So it’s, it’s turning electricity into kinetic ener, into kinetic like energy. It’s turning into motion. You can do the opposite with the basic same setup. It’s like if you manually turn that thing, it can put electricity back out.

That’s regen braking in electric vehicle. So you’re using the same exact. To you Put battery, take battery energy, put it into the motor, and the car goes. And then if you wanna decelerate, you stop putting energy into it and then you can kind of reverse that process. And then the wheels are then are putting energy back through the motor into the battery.

So this kind of stuff can apply to certain kinds of generators that might be used in wind turbines. But for this video specifically, I was trying to focus on just the motor something

move. Yeah. Fire description of regen braking. Am I correct in thinking that if you drive your car with your parking brake on, you will never use any energy

perpetual.

It’s like a

perpetual motion machine that sounds like what we’ve just invented. Patent. No joke.

I’m retiring. . Yeah, no joke. It’s like if an EV runs outta battery, you could technically tow the car to recharge it for a certain number of miles and put electricity back into the car. And that was actually shown.

There was a, a TV show called, uh, long Way Up with you, McGregor. where he rode these new electric motorcycles from South America up back into Los Angeles. Mm-hmm. , and it’s a great series. I re highly recommend it. It’s real amazing. But as part of this trip, they were trying to do this all electric trip. So his filming crew were driving Rivian trucks, which were brand spanking new.

They were basically driving prototype Rivian trucks. And they, they were in territory where like, of course there’s no charging. And super cold temps. It’s like hammering these electric vehicles really hard. And one of the, one of the rivian like ran outta charge. Mm-hmm. . And so they had got a tow truck and they towed the rivian for something like 30 miles or something like that.

And it had enough charge to kind of take off on its own again. Right. . So it’s, it’s really cool. It’s, I mean, it’s, it’s a very cool

technology. Very versatile. That’s interesting. As far as future videos that you would have in this vein, Not the importance of looking for the options to remove rare earth materials from the.

Makeup of these motors, but the motors themselves. There was this comment from Weisen Heter who wrote, hello Matt, the German company Mala presented a newly developed magnet less electric motor in May of 2021 with an efficiency of over 95%. But I can only express my respect for the young man for his baby.

There is so much heart and soul in it. So he’s pointing out that there’s a company out there that is doing something that is far more efficient than. 17 year olds managed to do. Yep. But again, yep. The point of it being this is an option for the attempts to remove some of the rare earth materials from the engine, which is important.

Had you heard of this company or are you planning on looking into this for any future videos? I’m gonna be looking

into it. I hadn’t looked at them specifically, but like I brought up in the video turn Tide motors. Yeah. Which is doing its own kind of thing. Another company I had looked into, A couple months ago and was gonna do a video on it and then kind of shelved.

It was Naron magnetics. They’re making magnets that have no rare earth elements in it. and their magnets are getting strong enough that it can be a viable, almost viable swap out. It’s not ex a one-to-one. You have to retool the design of the motor a little bit, but it’s, it’s another viable path to try to remove for earth elements, but still keep those magnets in whatever you’re doing.

So it’s like there’s different companies kind of coming at it from different points of like different angles in to try to solve the same problem. And I could, I could have easily brought them up in this video too, even though they’re not making a motor, they’re. Help with the same goal, remove it, rare elements, and here’s a magnet that you could potentially swap

out.

Going back to something Matt and I note again and again, and again, not the same tool for every job, but the right tool for the, for this job. Yeah. And perhaps in the future, what we’ll see is a combination. Of all three. A continuation of the use of rare Earth, some motors that may be used, the alternative magnets that you just described.

Yep. And then this new type of fully mechanical as opposed to there being the magnetic issue. Yep. Yep. So it’ll be interesting to see where that heads, and I would hope that we revisit this topic. I think it’s an interesting topic, and the topic of Rare Earth is definitely gonna be revisited because we really can’t avoid it when we’re talking about these technological developments.

Rare Earth. It plays such a key role in what we are currently using that this is going to be the a refrain that we’re gonna come back to again and again. As usual, I invite people to weigh in the comments, leave a note letting us know what you thought about this. Yes, Matt, you were gonna say something?

Yeah.

Before we, before we go on, I want, do you wanna bring on, uh, bring up the whole issue with some of the, the script causing confusion? .

Oh, okay. In the video? Yeah. I forgot about that.

Yeah. One thing I do wanna bring up is there were a couple issues in the video with some of our wording that created confusion.

And just to make it clear, it’s like I’m not no longer producing the videos by myself. It’s, it’s a team. Buck stops with me. Final script is me, but I have a team of researchers. We have a team of material scientists, mechanical engineers, and different people that help vet topics, provide input, take looks at sections of scripts or whole scripts.

So it’s like we have a whole team that help pull this stuff together. In pulling this together, we had all the details kind of buttoned up, but there were transition, there were a couple transitional sentences between sections of the script where it was a little too like hand wavy, and what we ended up saying was like, well, AC and DC motors were trying to get away from rear earth’s magnets, and it sounded like we were applying, implying.

AC motors used magnets or all motors, used magnets and it was creating a little bit of a kerfuffle. And rightfully so. It was, it was not precisely worded in those transitional parts. So I used the YouTube editor tool YouTube provides, it’s very rudimentary, but you can go in there and you can basically like splice something out.

So I went in there and I spliced one sentence out here and two sentences out there and hit go. And it does this little re-render thing and takes. and I just wanna rant a little bit about YouTube. I love you YouTube, and I hate you YouTube because they’re tool sucks. because what it, something has gone sideways on doing that.

It looks fine to me when I view it. And I’ve tried on different devices, different things, using VPNs to look like I’m coming from different parts of the world and looks fine to me. But people are commenting that the audio goes outta sync because it looks like what’s happened is. , they may have kept the original audio, but then trimmed the video and so the audio goes completely outta sync.

Right. . So it’s like, and they said it drifts as it goes on from about the eight minute mark, which is where the first edit was. And so it’s, it’s, I wanna apologize to everybody that saw it that way, and I’m trying to rectify it. I’m working with YouTube right now to see if they can fix it. I have a new edit that I uploaded, and I’m asking them, could you possibly swap out the edit?

Like, it’s like, it’s like, how do we fix this? Because Yeah. A problem, but I just wanna raise the question. I was like, I’m so glad people commented. The people that were kind of criticizing the implication, it was unintended. Stuff like that sometimes gets through. I’m only human and I try, I’m trying to rectify it, and I have a thing in the description and a pinned YouTube comment post about the changes I made, like what I trimmed out.

But it’s really frustrating as a YouTube kind of creator . Yeah. When this happens, it’s like I really wish there were better tools for me to rectify. Issues like this. It kind of is what it is. I’m trying my best. Please have patience, . That’s all. All I ask.

Yeah. It’s frustrating to know that you’re working under the confines of a half useful tool.

It’s like, yeah, imagine if you had a scissor, but you only had one scissor, not the other part. , you don’t have the other one you could cut, but it’s not gonna be great. Yeah. So anyway, as I was saying, back to, as Matt just mentioned, the commenters. You come in, you weigh in, you point out some errors maybe, or you just give your thoughts about.

It is what drives not only this channel, basically, almost a hundred percent is a huge part of how Matt’s channel works. So please continue to weigh in there. If you’re looking for other ways to support us, you can consider leaving a review at Apple, Google, Spotify, wherever it was. You found this podcast.

Go back there and leave a. You can also subscribe, like recommend us to your friends. That’s a great way to support us. If you’d like to more directly support us on YouTube, you can click the join button. You can also go to the Become a Supporter button at Still TBD fm. When you click those buttons, you’re able to throw coins directly at our heads.

The welts, they heal and the support is appreciated. Thank you so much. All of these steps are great ways to support us. Thank you so much for taking your time to listen or watch, and we’ll talk to you next time.