Bengaluru: A Bangaluru-based start-up is writing a new chapter in India’s electric vehicle manufacturing sector, breaking the monopoly of China’s over rare earth minerals and about magnets, which are used in making high-power motors used in such vehicles. According to reports, the start-up Vimag Labs, has been founded by Manish Seth. Thanks to his passion for breaking the convention and the courage to innovate, the start-up has developed total magnet-free and rare-earth-free motor that can be used in the electric vehicles.
But, how did he conceive the idea? There’s an interesting tale behind this invention that originated at a time when the world was also adapting changes, which looked alien to the eyes when seen through the conventional frames. Back to 2020—that’s when the invention took its birth.
Like others struggling to keep their businesses floating in the ‘locked-down’ markets, Manish Seth was also perturbed and putting up a fight against the adversities to keep the engine running that powered his business.
A shipment of magnets that was crucial
for building the prototype motors that his startup was working on was stranded in Shanghai port due to lockdown. This necessity was the mother of the invention. “I decided that we need to do something about it. And that’s how the idea of the total magnet-free, rare-earth-free motor started,” he told India Today in an exclusive interview.
Unlike vehicles which depend on fuel and engine for internal combustion that helps to generate the energy needed for its movement, EV vehicles use batteries and motor as alternatives. The motor is the factor that determines the vehicle’s efficiency, torque, acceleration, and range of its distance covering capacity.
Conventionally, the high-performance EV motors are dependent on magnets, which are permanent in nature. A data cited in the report claims that China has a supply chain monopoly over about 90 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals and about 94 percent of the magnets, specifically Neodymium-Iron-Boron, or NdFeB magnets. These elements are very important for production of the electric motors that are fitted in high-power vehicles. But when China put restrictions on export of these elements, India like the rest of the world faced supply shocks.
Manish Seth had to hunt for an alternative that would be effective. According to experts, other alternatives that don’t contain magnet like AC induction motors and switched reluctance motors, are incompetent or inefficient.
“You cannot produce the required torque or power with the alternatives,” he told India Today. But the startup has come up with motors that use copper coil. Using software and the power of electronics, the start-up makes the copper coil function like a magnet inside the motor, as he claims.