Modal Motors Wants to Cut Out Chinese Rare Earths Entirely: The Ambition Behind Magnet-Free Motors

A Geopolitical Bet from a Startup

Electric motor supply chains are becoming a flashpoint where technology and geopolitics converge — and US startup Modal Motors is offering a radical answer: bypass China entirely.

According to original reporting, the company is developing small, lightweight electric motors that contain no rare-earth permanent magnets, targeting applications in drones, fans, and robotics. The technical direction reflects a deep rethinking of structural dependencies embedded in the global motor supply chain.

Why Rare Earths Are Such a Persistent Pain Point

Modern high-performance electric motors rely heavily on neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) rare-earth permanent magnets, which deliver exceptionally high magnetic energy density in a compact form factor. These materials are core to the drive systems of drones, robots, and electric vehicles alike.

The problem is that rare-earth mining, separation, and magnet manufacturing are highly concentrated in China. This concentration leaves downstream manufacturers perpetually exposed on cost, supply stability, and policy risk. For drone and robotics companies that depend on large volumes of small motors, any supply disruption can directly impact production.

Modal Motors isn't trying to find alternative sourcing geography — it's taking the approach of eliminating the need for rare earths at the technical level. If a motor doesn't require permanent magnets in the first place, the leverage that rare-earth supply chains provide simply ceases to exist.

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NdFeB magnets dominate the market because of their unmatched energy product — up to 60 MGOe — which measures the magnetic energy density per unit volume, five to ten times that of ferrite magnets. China controls roughly 85% of global rare-earth mining and over 90% of rare-earth magnet production capacity, a position shaped by decades of industrial policy and resource endowment. China's export controls on gallium and germanium in 2023, followed by expanded restrictions in 2024, laid bare the fragility of Western supply chains in stark terms. While the US, EU, and Japan are accelerating domestic rare-earth processing capacity, rebuilding the full industrial chain from ore extraction to usable magnets is widely expected to take at least a decade. This reality makes "eliminating demand through technology" a more immediately actionable de-risking strategy than "replacing the source geographically."

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The Engineering Trade-offs of Magnet-Free Motors

Magnet-free motors are not a new concept. Induction motors, switched reluctance motors, and similar architectures have never relied on permanent magnets — Tesla's early vehicles used induction motors. But under the tight constraints of miniaturization and light weight, maintaining power density and efficiency without rare-earth magnets is the genuine engineering challenge.

Modal Motors emphasizes that its motors are compact and lightweight, which suggests the team is directly targeting the inherent disadvantage of magnet-free designs in power-to-volume ratio. For drones, where every gram matters, even small differences in efficiency or weight translate directly into flight time and payload capacity.

Based on available information, the company has not yet disclosed specific technical parameters or efficiency figures, so whether its approach can genuinely compete with rare-earth permanent magnet motors on performance remains to be verified.

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Switched reluctance motors (SRM) and induction motors represent the two most mature magnet-free architectures, but both have notable limitations. Induction motors rely on induced rotor currents to generate magnetic fields, resulting in higher slip losses at low speeds and relatively complex control algorithms. Switched reluctance motors offer a simple, winding-free rotor with reliability advantages in high-temperature environments, but their inherent torque ripple causes vibration and noise — particularly problematic on vibration-sensitive platforms like drones. In recent years, researchers and industry players have also explored electrically excited synchronous motors, axial flux topologies, and soft magnetic composite materials in pursuit of permanent-magnet-class power density without rare earths. Modal Motors has not disclosed which specific topology it uses — a critical missing piece for assessing the viability of its technical approach.

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Why Drones and Robotics Make Sense as Entry Points

The company's focus on drones, fans, and robotics as initial markets is deliberate. These sectors are experiencing explosive growth and require large volumes of small motors, while also having strategic requirements for supply chain stability — especially in defense and industrial robotics applications, where supply chain sovereignty often matters more than cost alone.

In other words, Modal Motors isn't just targeting a technology gap. It's targeting a geopolitically driven market demand: manufacturers who want to reduce dependence on Chinese supply chains may be willing to pay a premium for rare-earth-free solutions.

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Defense procurement policy provides clear institutional backing for this market logic. The US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has explicitly restricted military procurement of drone systems containing components from certain Chinese suppliers, and multiple executive orders have directed critical infrastructure sectors to reduce reliance on China-sourced components. This means drone manufacturers serving government and defense markets face not just cost incentives, but compliance pressure to find supply chain alternatives. The industrial robotics sector faces similar trends — as reshoring policies advance, supply chain traceability requirements in factory automation procurement are tightening. For Modal Motors, these policy signals effectively create a qualifying barrier that filters out price-sensitive buyers and concentrates a customer base willing to pay for de-Sinicized solutions.

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The Distance Between Ambition and Reality

"Completely removing" China from the electric motor supply chain is an enormously ambitious goal — and one full of uncertainty. Rare-earth magnets dominate the market because they have built deep moats in performance, cost, and technological maturity. For magnet-free solutions to achieve meaningful scale substitution, they need to clear three hurdles simultaneously: performance parity, competitive production cost, and customer confidence.

Publicly available information remains quite limited, making it impossible to assess Modal Motors' technical readiness or commercial prospects. But the trend it represents deserves attention: as supply chain security becomes a central issue in technology competition, more and more innovation will no longer pursue peak performance alone — instead, supply chain resilience will be treated as a first-order design objective. That shift, quiet as it may be, amounts to a fundamental restructuring of the globalized motor industry.