1973 Redux: How China's Rare Earth Curbs Could Power India's Own Japanese Breakout Moment

October 1973. The Yom Kippur War, the fourth of the Arab-Israeli wars. Both the United States (US) and the Soviet Union are involved, coming to the rescue of their respective allies.

As the war progresses, the Arab countries whip out a different kind of weapon. In retaliation for US support of Israel, the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) imposes an oil embargo.

Oil prices rocket almost overnight. In America, cars queue at petrol stations. Not only are fuel costs soaring; signs at stations are foreboding. There is a prospect of cars departing the stations without petrol, or at best with limited fuel due to forced rationing.

One thing became clear: the large, petrol-guzzling V8 muscle cars that Americans had grown accustomed to driving would no longer serve them well. With fuel prices quadrupling from $2 to $11 per barrel within months, they would need to switch to more compact, fuel-efficient cars sooner rather than later.

At that time, Japan was right there, well placed to capitalise on this shift. Automakers like Toyota, Honda, and Datsun (now Nissan) had already been producing smaller, more efficient vehicles for their domestic market, tailored to their realities. When fuel economy started to matter to Americans more than size and power, the Japanese cars found a ready market.

More important, the US began to build domestic capability. It wasn’t as if it lacked oil. It was deliberately preserving its reserves through what critics called the drain America first policy, where cheaper foreign crude was preferred.

But now, things had to change.

So it created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975 as a buffer against future supply disruptions. This underground storage system could hold over 700 million barrels of emergency crude oil. The development of Alaska's massive oil reserves was put on the fast lane. The production limits that had previously constrained US domestic output were removed.

Therefore, what began as an energy crisis had become a catalyst for innovation, efficiency, and a significant reshuffling of global automotive power.

About half a century later, India stands at a similar crossroads, not because of an oil embargo sparked by a war, although the world was briefly headed there in light of the Israel-Iran conflict, but because of a striking paradox, much like the US in the 1970s.

India sits atop a significant share of the world's rare-earth mineral reserves — 6 per cent, alongside 35 per cent in rare-earth-bearing beach and sand mineral deposits — the essential ingredients for manufacturing the powerful permanent magnets that drive electric vehicle (EV) motors. These neodymium magnets are to electric cars what engines are to conventional vehicles. Without these magnets, any kind of EV revolution would be hard to imagine.

Yet India mines a mere 2,900 metric tonnes of these materials annually, which is less than 1 per cent of global production, whilst exporting much of what it does extract to countries like Japan for processing.

Meanwhile, India imports 870 tonnes of finished rare earth magnets annually, worth Rs 306 crore, with over 90 per cent coming from China. It's as if Saudi Arabia were selling crude oil to refineries abroad, then buying petrol from Venezuela.

China's prolonged and ever-strengthening export curbs on all things rare earths, from materials to the equipment essential to process them, mean India's EV industry (though far from just EVs alone) is staring at potential supply disruptions. The halt in magnet imports serves as a wake-up call, much like those American petrol station queues in 1973.

The oil-rare earth parallel is especially relevant as the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously said in 1992: “The Middle East has oil, and China has rare earths.”

The good news is that India possesses the resources and needs to build domestic capability, like the US did in the aftermath of the 1973 oil embargo. Moreover, the global appetite for EVs is exploding, with magnet demand expected to grow exponentially over the next decade.

Countries worldwide are desperately seeking alternatives to Chinese supply chains. Herein lies an extraordinary opportunity: with its vast mineral wealth and growing manufacturing capabilities, India can emerge as the Japan of the rare-earth magnet industry.

EV Motor Magnets: The India-China Situation

An EV's motor is like the heart of the car. Inside that motor are powerful permanent magnets that create the magnetic fields needed to spin the motor and move the car. These magnets combine several desirable qualities. They are strong, lightweight, and maintain their magnetism permanently without needing electricity.

The supreme amongst these magnets is the neodymium magnet, also known as the NdFeB magnet. "The NdFeB magnets are the most powerful magnets known to man," says Bhaktha Keshavachar, the founder of a Bengaluru-based deep tech company called Chara Technologies. They have developed novel rare-earth-free motors.

Without the neodymium magnets, the current EV vehicle production would grind to a halt until alternatives emerge. And India can’t afford that, not with its ambitious target of 30 per cent EV penetration by 2030.

To make these magnets, however, a country needs rare-earth elements. These elements are actually abundant. What's rare about them is their presence in concentrated, economically mineable deposits. Once they are out, a proper mix of these elements provides just the right kind of magnet that makes EVs a practical reality.

The key elements to make these magnets are neodymium, the principal player; praseodymium, often used alongside neodymium; dysprosium, called upon generally for high-temperature performance; and terbium, to enhance magnetic properties.

India has these rare earth elements, though in unequal measure. "NDPR (neodymium and praseodymium), apparently, we have in abundance. Even if you figure out the technology, the machines, and the commercials, I think this TRDY (terbium and dysprosium) is a problem. It gets a little bit more complex. It's not impossible, but that is something we need to figure out," Keshavachar says.

In all the years that India has had knowledge of its rare-earth resources, it has fallen short in developing the end-to-end ability to extract rare earths, process them, and ensure their conversion into meaningful final products, like magnets.

“The process of making that rare-earth raw material into a magnet is very complex. The steps are plenty, and it requires a lot of investment. The capex is huge. Probably the way China was open to trade earlier, people (in India) may have thought that if they start doing this (work), then the cost of doing it in-house may be much more than what it is coming from China,” says a senior executive from the automobile industry with over three decades of experience in the EV and commercial mobility space and who did not want to be named.

"We have rare earths in the form of mines, but it's not been explored yet. We feel that it was not fully exploited in terms of mining. Because there was a supply chain coming from China. So maybe it was in their strategic interest not to explore whatever we had and keep using the Chinese magnets," says Rajendra Rajamane, Managing Director of Rajamane Industries, now in its 50th year, and Director of Gremot Mobility, a more recent venture.

Turning rare earths into magnets broadly involves four steps: mining and concentration, separation and purification, alloy creation, and magnet manufacturing.

India knows step one, which is how to dig up ore that contains tiny amounts of rare earths, mixed with lots of other materials. But where it struggles is steps two and three, chemically separating each rare-earth element from the others and subsequently melting and mixing the purified elements in exact proportions to create the right alloy. Finally, turning the alloy into a magnet is probably not such a hard ask.

Where the world has fallen short, China has gone on to use its dominance over rare earths to harass other countries, including India. "We have significant amounts of rare earth ore. But the technology for the extraction and then building the magnet, we have not mastered it yet. And the equipment needed to do that, China put an embargo on that about two years ago. So they first put an embargo on the technology and the equipment, and now they have gone to the next level and put an embargo on the product itself, which contains the rare-earth metals," Keshavachar explains.

China was strategic with its rare earths focus. It invested heavily in rare-earth processing technology, even when it wasn't profitable, even when it was extremely polluting. Perhaps it helped that the world wasn't as committed to environmental protection as it has been in recent years.

It built and centralised the entire supply chain, from mining to magnets, achieving efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and, over time, massive economies of scale that put it out of reach of anyone even thinking about competing with them. As a result, the country today controls about 90 per cent of rare-earth processing globally, even though it only has about 37 per cent of global reserves.

China's gain, though, has been the world's bane. Thanks to its power, it has been able to restrict exports by various means, like necessitating special certificates, disrupting magnet supplies to India and other countries in the process.

Generally speaking, they have the power to set global prices for their critical materials and pull the lever on other countries helplessly dependent on them for related technology and expertise. Given the criticality of applications dependent on rare earths, it is also a question of national security for the world.

The Current Crisis

The effects of this Chinese power are being felt strongly in India. The industry's dependency on China's rare-earth magnets is high. According to VishnuTeja Vinjamuri, a motor design engineer with over a decade of experience, "For major players like Hero and Bajaj, 80 per cent of their powertrains are based on rare-earth magnets. Because there are limitations of space and weight where they are put to use. And if you have limitations of space and weight, only a permanent magnet machine is able to do the job," he says.

"It's been a little bit crazy in the past two months because of the embargo by China," Keshavachar says. When Rajamane started Gremot about five years ago, he did not anticipate things to come to a head in this way. "Of course, there was always a threat of being a one-country supply. But then we never anticipated that it would go down to such a level that many of the companies would have to slow down their production, or redesign," Rajamane says.

Indian motor manufacturers are currently working with existing stocks of rare-earth magnets. But stocks are bound to be limited. "Already production levels have started falling since last month because of the stock levels coming down. People are becoming slightly cautious in trying to overproduce," Rajamane explains. "Each one of them is trying to protect his domain, saying I have enough material, but, at the same time, they don't have too much to run for too long," he says.

“People might be having reserves for now,” says the senior executive, “but if this issue is not resolved in the next two months, you will see a huge shortage.”

This is all China's ploy, according to Vinjamuri. "China has introduced a new regulatory requirement mandating that Indian importers of magnets disclose detailed end-user information, including client names, contact details, and use cases. This is a calculated move, not just regulatory formalism. It allows Chinese suppliers to map India’s electric motor ecosystem, identify key OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and motor manufacturers, and then bypass intermediaries by offering complete motor solutions, magnets bundled with motor assemblies, directly to these players," he says.

“The strategic intent is clear,” Vinjamuri adds. “China aims to move up the value chain, expanding its footprint from component supply to system-level dominance. By doing so, it can lock in Indian OEMs with integrated Chinese offerings, making it harder for domestic players to compete on cost or convenience.”

Playing Catch-Up

China is comfortably in the lead across the entire value chain of exploring, mining, and processing rare earths, and then manufacturing rare-earth products. If India is going to hit the ground running now, it's going to take a lot of time to catch up. Depending on whom you ask, India's neighbour is anywhere between 5 and 15 years ahead of the world.

By Keshavachar's estimate, India would take about 5 to 10 years if it went down this path. However, with already a three-decade head start, it's anyone's guess how far ahead China will be by then, thanks to its well-entrenched technology and cost advantages.

Having said that, India stands to benefit unquestionably from going down this road on mission mode. This is because the world is trying to diversify its supply chains away from China. "That is one good, positive thing if any country, including India, starts manufacturing. The rest of the world is the market, and they already have this China Plus One policy. So they will really jump at it," Keshavachar says.

Plus, it’s not as if India has to start from zero. It has rare earths, and it has some expertise. "This whole technology is not very great rocket science, I don't think, and already we have a very large Indian government-owned company which has been into this space for a very long time (Hyderabad-based National Mineral Development Corporation, or NMDC)," Rajamane says.

"Any of the mining companies will be able to do it. Then, any of the mine processing companies will be able to process it. It's just that to get those machines and all those things running, that is going to take a little time. Maybe in about three to five years we should be comfortably able to see quite a good number of magnets," he adds.

The key, as it is with developing any cutting-edge technology, is investment, and loads of it, an area where India, according to Keshavachar, has fallen short in the past. "I don't think as a country, as a society, we have the stomach to invest large amounts of money in technologies and manufacturing projects where the returns are unclear. And that is where I think we will have a problem," he says, citing examples of semiconductors and, of course, who in India can forget (and forgive?) jet engines.

"You know, since I was in college in the 80s, we have been talking about jet engines. We did not invest in it. It requires a few thousand crores. I know we invested about a few hundred crores. It requires a large amount of money. The same thing will happen in battery technology, same thing in rare earth. Somehow we need to figure out the investment," he says.

The Indian government is trying. It launched the National Critical Mineral Mission (NCMM) in 2025 to develop an effective framework for rare-earth self-reliance in the face of China's restrictions. Under the NCMM, which has a budgetary allocation of Rs 16,300 for a period of seven years, Geological Survey of India (GSI) has been assigned to carry out 1,200 exploration projects from FY25 to FY31.

The Centre is also reportedly taking protective measures by asking Indian Rare Earths Limited (IREL), a public sector undertaking, to suspend a 13-year-old agreement on export of rare earth elements to Japan to safeguard supplies for domestic needs.

Further, India is reportedly in talks with companies to establish long-term stockpiles of rare-earth magnets by offering fiscal incentives for domestic production. It’s also engaging the US, with both countries agreeing to cooperate on the critical minerals supply chain with the intention to "expand and diversify" supply routes. Even the Quad, a strategic grouping of India, the US, Japan, and Australia, has launched a new initiative focused on critical minerals called the Quad Critical Minerals Initiative, announced on 1 July.

Most notably, India is reportedly mulling a Rs 5,000 crore scheme to promote the production of rare earths and rare-earth magnets.

Rajamane believes that the government has made a good start with funding. "At least the government has come forward to give the initial funding," he says in reference to the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the automobile and auto components industry and the financial allotment for exploration and mining of minerals. "I feel that it should help a lot of private companies if they want to get into some sort of exploration, but then that would mean a different ballgame altogether because in India, mining is a different political situation," he says.

IREL achieved its highest ever mineral production capacity of 531,000 tonnes in FY 2023-24. It plans to triple its rare-earths production by 2032, though the company is said to be facing significant capacity underutilisation issues. IREL's own refineries are stuck at no more than 40 per cent of capacity because there's not enough mined ore to feed them.

The source of the hesitation with investment in any forward-looking technology is unclear returns. But investment in segments where the returns are unclear also carry the promise of highly non-linear returns. "The fact that because of our space technology programme, there is so much technology we have now that can be used in a lot of other places. And now there are startups coming up, like Skyroot and Agnikul. So there are a lot of ripple effects, but it took about two to three decades. That kind of commitment should be there," Keshavachar says.

"Because a country without semiconductors is under a lot of pressure. A country without a jet engine is under a lot of pressure. A country without batteries or rare-earth metals is also the same," he asserts.

Three Paths Forward

There are three ways of solving India's rare earth problem, according to Keshavachar.

One is mining and extraction. Because, lest we forget, rare earths are not just used in motor magnets but in a whole bunch of other applications: medical equipment, defence applications, semiconductor processing, sound technology, and so on.

“I was not aware of the speaker technology being affected to such an extent because I thought they were still at the lower level of the magnets. It looks like they have also moved at a higher level of magnets, with the speaker sizes coming down and sound technology moving in a very rapid way,” Rajamane says.

"The second approach," according to Keshavachar, "is we should start looking at magnets which don't use rare earths, but try to get magnets that are as powerful.” That will require fundamental material research and an appropriate level of investment. “Again goes back to the same problem we have. We can't invest thousands of crores over 10 years. But that is what companies in the US and Europe are doing, like iron-nitride magnets, potassium-strontium magnets, but they are all a decade away."

The third approach is to devise novel motor technology solutions. And here, the work is underway in a significant way, including in India.

"Just like if you remember we moved from incandescent lamps to LED lamps, the same transition will happen in motors soon. And the effects will be larger because 12 per cent of the electrical energy we produce on this planet is consumed by lighting, and 60 per cent is consumed by motors. So even if you move the efficiency of the motors by a few per cent, it has a large effect on the ecosystem," Keshavachar says.

The Motor Technology Landscape

There are broadly three classes of motors: the induction motor, the permanent-magnet-based motor, and the reluctance motor.

The induction motor is commonly used and works very well. But it has an efficiency issue. "The only problem with induction motors is that they are not very efficient. They are about 60–70 per cent efficient, depending on the size of the motor. So that means a third of the energy we put in is wasted as heat, which is not sustainable economically or environmentally," Keshavachar says.

The permanent-magnet-based motor, such as the brushless DC motor (BLDC) and the permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM), runs on a simple principle: the field created by the stator attracts or repels a magnet, and that generates the torque. Particularly with the NdFeB magnets — the most powerful magnets known to man — enormous torque is generated within a small volume.

"They work really well. They are very easy to control. And they are a fairly well-established technology. At least a couple of decades old. But the only problem is the rare-earth problem, where China, the environment, and cost are the issues," Keshavachar explains.

The third kind is the reluctance motor. The governing principle in this technology is that magnetic flux, just like any other fluid, takes the least resistance path. Within the reluctance motor are two subtypes: the switched reluctance motor (SRM) and the synchronous reluctance motor.

Keshavachar is well versed with this motor type.

"We started with SRMs, but the noise and the torque ripple are unmanageable. I think the rest of the stuff we can manage. We spent one and a half years, half a million dollars to build those motors, and then we realised it doesn't work. Then we switched to synchronous reluctance motors. Which again took another two years to do all the fundamental R&D in motor design, hardware architectures, and critically, the algorithms that control this motor," he says, explaining his tech trajectory with Chara, the company he founded in Bengaluru, Karnataka, after returning from a decade-long stint at Intel in the US.

According to Rajamane, "The induction motor and the switched reluctance motor have their own challenges in terms of achieving the given torque, the size of the motor, and the type of electronics you need to control these motors, which are a little more complicated than what can be done with magnet motors."

The problem with reluctance motors is that they are highly non-linear, very difficult to control, and have issues like torque ripple, says the Chara founder.

"That is where we have done a lot of research and come up with motor designs and complex software algorithms to manage the non-linearity. And now we have working products that we are selling to select applications."

Opting for the synchronous reluctance motor in place of the permanent magnet motor comes at a cost.

“Using a permanent magnet allows me to reduce the amount of steel and copper in the machine. But without a magnet, I need an alternative method to generate torque — whether through magnetic reluctance or electromagnetic induction or through hybrid excitation," explains Vinjamuri.

Chara injects more steel and copper to compensate for the loss of the magnet.

"Which makes our motors heavier and bigger by about 10–15 per cent," Keshavachar says.

This is a big or small difference, depending on how one looks at it. In the case of, say, a three-wheeler motor, which is the largest selling motor, the PMSM motor weighs about 15 kilograms. Keshavachar's motor, on the other hand, weighs about 18 kilograms. That's a sizeable difference in a straight comparison between the motors.

However, considering a three-wheeler overall, say a passenger auto rickshaw, whose gross vehicle weight is close to 750 kilograms, the 3 kilogram difference doesn't amount to much.

"So at a system level, it does not make a difference. Rest of the stuff, we match — efficiency, torque, power. It is just that the weight is a little bit heavier," Keshavachar explains.

The deep tech founder believes they have a great solution for a significant number of applications, chiefly those which operate on mother earth, the ground, such as EVs, as well as industrial and agricultural equipment.

"Whatever leaves mother earth, like a drone or a VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing), we are still not a good solution because, there, every gram counts. That is our only disadvantage," Keshavachar says.

But they believe their technology will improve over time.

"We are at the beginning of this synchronous reluctance motor technology adoption. We will become better and better, and maybe this 15 per cent difference can be made 5 per cent — with the better use of steel and various other techniques, and maybe then it will become more palatable to even the airborne customers," the innovator explains.

Reluctance motors have not been deployed anywhere in the world yet. So if Chara manages to do that, they will be the first to do it not only in India, but around the world.

"The rare earths — it's not only for us (India). If I have a rare earth magnet, I'll go sell it to the US, to the UK. And even if you get like a fraction of the market — I don't need the whole market — it's still a good business. I think that's how we should think as an industry," Keshavachar says.

Chara has partnered with Greaves Cotton, the largest diesel engine manufacturer today. The design and engineering will be Chara's whilst manufacturing and distribution will be Greaves'.

"We are fundamentally a tech company. We think we have this cool, pertinent technology, but we don't have the distribution. We can't go talk to a lot of customers. Greaves has that," Keshavachar explains part of the rationale behind this partnership.

As for Rajamane Industries and Gremot Mobility, they are engaged in designing and developing all three types of motor technologies. Besides the magnet motors, they contract manufacture the induction and reluctance motor types for a couple of vendors in India.

A team of researchers at the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, have developed a motor free of rare-earth magnets. They claim that their motor’s performance is comparable to that of China’s permanent magnet motor while also being cheaper by about 25 per cent. They are partnering with TSUYO Manufacturing Private Limited for joint research and manufacturing of their rare-earth-free motor.

Similarly, Bengaluru-based EV maker Numeros Motors is collaborating with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bhubaneswar for a two-year research initiative focused on exploring and evaluating various motor types that are free of rare earths and magnets. Their goal is to develop efficient and affordable motor solutions.

Globally, companies like Nissan, Renault, US-based companies Niron Magnetics, Turntide Technologies, and, more recently, Conifer, Canada-based Enedym, and the United Kingdom-based Advanced Electric Machines are exploring rare-earth-free motor technologies.

Of late, another type of motor within the rare-earth-free realm is rising as a promising solution and an alternative to the magnet motor — the externally excited synchronous motor (EESMs).

"There is something called the brushed DC motor. Which actually is a good motor. The only problem is the brushes, the commutator. They have to transfer the energising current to the rotating rotor. The only way you do that is you put those brushes which lean against the rotor and transfer the power. But as the rotor is rotating, the brushes start wearing away. Which is not acceptable today. Because every now and then we can't keep changing the brushes. Now because of all the new developments, people think that we can wirelessly transfer the power to the rotating rotor. So that's why it is called an externally excited synchronous motor," says Keshavachar, who believes that there is still an efficiency issue with this type of motor.

BMW famously uses an EESM in its latest generation of electric cars. The German company ZF Friedrichshafen AG, one of the world’s largest suppliers of auto parts, has developed a 220-kilowatt motor that doesn’t use rare earths and whose performance is comparable to the rare-earth permanent-magnet synchronous motors. Falling under the EESM category, ZF’s motor is of the separately-excited (or doubly-excited) synchronous type.

Vinjamuri believes EESMs can come into play in high-volume applications.

“As far as India is concerned, we have two main options, at least until we build our own rare-earth magnet capability and reduce dependency on China. We can either go with induction machines or use a combination of reluctance-based designs with ferrite magnets. But for large-scale applications, like electric cars, we should also explore electrically excited machines. In EESMs, you can even have windings on the rotor. By actively controlling the rotor’s magnetic field, I can precisely manage torque and optimise efficiency across different operating conditions. However, this requires a precision mechanism to control rotor excitation accurately, which is key to unlocking the full potential of this technology."

Against the backdrop of China’s rare-earth curbs, one can expect plenty of innovation in motor design going forward.

"If this magnet issue persists, then maybe a lot of people will get into a lot of redesigning of the motors and then looking at the different types of technology," says Rajamane.

"To get the right torques, they might get into some sort of gear attachments, which would help them to get the required torques. So maybe you will suddenly see more mechanical elements getting into EVs, mainly on the bikes and the three-wheelers."

Evidently, India's future lies not in arriving at any one particular solution but in carrying forward a multitude of them, depending on the particular application.

But despite the potential innovation, the rare-earth magnet motor will remain indispensable.

"Whether you like rare earth or not, whether you like China or not, you cannot beat the performance of a rare earth magnet-based motor," Keshavachar says.

"We do need the rare earths to bring down the size of the motor. We get much more efficiency, and the motor size is smaller for a given kilowatt (with the use of rare earths)," Rajamane says.

"It makes it easier on the electronics side also, because any motor requires a magnetic field, and you already have that magnetic field readily available with rare earths. So that helps you a lot in the whole design of the motor."

Over time, the market will determine the winning technologies.

“In the long run, rare-earth and rare-earth-free magnets will co-exist,” says Vinjamuri.

“The right choice depends on the application and cost, ultimately driven by what the customer is willing to pay. To compete globally, India needs sustained R&D support from the government, much like Europe’s CORDIS mission, to accelerate innovation in alternative magnet and motor technologies."

The R&D Imperative

Research and development (R&D) in this space will be crucial.

In July 2024, the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, as part of its eMobility R&D Roadmap for India report, highlighted the need for R&D in 34 critical areas of e-mobility and suggested an allocation of about Rs 1,152 crore for five years.

As per a 2024 report by Foundation for Advancing Science and Technology, the global R&D intensity (the ratio of a firm’s R&D expenditure to its revenue) in the automobile industry is 3.1 times higher than for India.

Indian firms generally hesitate to invest in long-term R&D due to uncertain returns.

"Inadequate R&D is the single biggest challenge," says Krishnan Chakravarthy, who works in engineering simulation consultancy for aerospace, automotive, and defence industries.

"The problem is that our industry leaders think in terms of binaries as to whether a technology is mature or not. They don't take the effort to understand at which stage of maturity a technology is and try to push it through the R&D cycle."

According to Chakravarthy, R&D in metallurgy and related areas will have to be stepped up.

"Technology exists at early-stage lab prototype level or mature for very specific applications that work for a limited performance or efficiency range. But to translate that to mass-scale, high-use EV applications requires more R&D work in metallurgy and associated disciplines — areas which the industry has not worked on enough."

The margin for error is especially lower in a business-to-consumer product like EVs.

"You'll have to be within a small margin of efficiency and productivity loss with respect to the currently available magnets to be able to commercialise them reliably and provide value to customers. No one is going to buy a non-rare-earth magnet if it runs out of life in, say, 80 per cent of the motor life that rare-earth magnets allow for," says Chakravarthy.

In this light, the Union government's announcement on 1 July of a Rs 1 lakh crore Research Development and Innovation (RDI) scheme, aimed at unlocking private sector-led R&D in strategic and sunrise sectors, is more than welcome.

The scheme will offer long-term financing or refinancing at low or nil interest rates to address the funding constraints faced by private players in R&D-intensive domains. Interestingly, it will support high technology readiness level (TRL) projects.

Whilst all such initiatives kick off to secure India’s future, nudging China diplomatically will be necessary for relief in the short term, according to Rajamane.

"Build domestic capability and also look at innovation, but at the same time, we can in the short term try to go along with China to a certain extent to just keep ourselves isolated from some of these issues," he says.

Delhi and Beijing are in touch about the rare earths issue. Diplomacy won’t be easy, especially in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor. But in light of the magnet crisis, India will probably pull out all the stops to resolve the issue with China in the short term, while, of course, strengthening its long-term capabilities.

In Vinjamuri’s view, dedicated technology missions aimed at addressing critical dependencies beyond EVs would be beneficial in the long run.

“These missions must prioritise the development of alternative motor technologies and domestic production of rare-earth-free magnets. By doing so, India can position itself not only as a global leader in next-generation mobility solutions but also as a powerhouse in core technologies and materials — securing both economic and geopolitical advantages in the years to come,” he says.

Just as the US developed its domestic capabilities and Japan seized the moment in the automotive space after 1973, India now has a similar opportunity — not only to strengthen itself, but also to lead the world in rare earths and motor technologies.