China's e-bike makers eye foreign markets
China became the world’s largest manufacturer and consumer of electric bikes by the end of 2017, Ma Zhongchao, director with the China Electric Vehicle Association, said.
Over 700 manufacturers in China are producing 33 million electric bikes annually, far exceeding domestic demand, Ma said on the sideline of the fair. It is an inevitable trend for Chinese-made e-bikes to go abroad, he added.
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e-bikes and e-scooters are popping up everywhere.
They're getting a lot of support from governments, despite teething pains.
2,000 just showed up in San Francisco in a matter of weeks. Lots of stories.
https://www.recode.net/2018/4/29/17...limebike-spin-san-francisco-dockless[/BCOLOR]
What's nice? They ALL use NdFeB-based PMMs. Up to ~1kW. OK, not so big, but that's 33,000,000 just this year, just in China.
Two sources to continue:
http://erean.eu/wordpress/e-bikes-and-rare-earths/[/BCOLOR]
http://www.jee.ro/covers/art.php?issue=WF1275061958W4bffe6c679b75[/BCOLOR]
Using 100g/250kW (250kW is the legal limit for unlicensed pedal bikes in my homestate and in numerous other locales), and an average 500kW motor size, that's 200g x 33,000,000 bikes for a total magnet demand of 6,600 metric tons of NdFeB. Including 50% swarf and 30% NdPr content gets us to 6,600 x 0.3/0.5 = 3960 metric tons NdPr.
4000 tpa NdPr and growing. That's nice.
By the way, the average human is worth about 50W effort.
Again, let's not forget every one of them has a Li-ion battery. FD: Long LIT.
Long LYC, of course.
GLTAH
(20min delay)