Tesla is investing billions of dollars in the Optimus robots, which Musk has said will someday perform many daily functions. At an event last fall, he showed the robots serving drinks and unloading groceries from a car.
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Musk also said on the earnings call that he would reduce the time he spends as an adviser to Trump to focus more on Tesla, which reported a drastic decline in profits.
Cars, factory robots, missiles, smart bombs, stealth fighters and many other products also require rare earth magnets made partly with heavy rare earth metals.
Yang Jie, an export control lawyer at Huiye, a Shanghai law firm, said China’s regulations call for the Ministry of Commerce to make decisions on export licences within 45 working days of the announcement, which was on April 4. The ministry is allowed to take longer if it decides that licences are relevant to national security.
Issuing export licences for shipments to the United States could take much longer, given recent tensions between the two countries, he warned. “Six months for rare earth exports is my personal estimate of the fastest time – the actual time may be far more than six months,” he said.
Not all manufacturers of humanoid robots may be as affected as Tesla.
Jonathan Hurst, the chief robot officer at Agility Robotics, another American maker of humanoid robots, said robots could be designed to minimise their need for magnets made with heavy rare earth metals.
Agility has designed its robots with slightly less human proportions than the Optimus robots. This provides more room for the electric motors, Hurst said. As a result, the motors in many of Agility’s robots may not overheat.
Since the April 4 ban, China’s customs agents have been checking exports carefully to make sure that no magnets with heavy rare earths are allowed to leave the country, industry executives said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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