In a modest garage workshop outside Orlando, Florida, 17‑year‑old Robert Sansone has sketched, printed, and machined his way to an invention that seasoned engineers at billion‑dollar car companies are still chasing: an electric‑vehicle (EV) motor that completely eliminates the need for magnets and rare‑earth metals while outperforming today’s industry standard on two of the metrics that matter most—torque and efficiency.
Why rare‑earth‑free matters
Inside almost every modern EV resides a permanent‑magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). Those magnets rely on rare‑earth elements such as neodymium and dysprosium. Mining and processing those materials is notoriously energy‑intensive, environmentally destructive, and geopolitically fraught—China currently refines nearly 90 percent of the global supply. The result is a supply‑chain risk that inflates costs and undermines the very climate benefits EVs promise.
Sansone’s prototype rewrites that script. By starting with a synchronous reluctance motor (SynRM)—a simple, magnet‑free workhorse usually found in desk fans and industrial pumps—he re‑imagined the rotor geometry to coax far higher torque out of the same basic principles of “reluctance,” or the natural tendency of a magnetic field to follow the path of least resistance through iron. Early bench tests show the teenager’s design delivering 39 percent more torque and up to 37 percent greater energy efficiency than a comparably sized PMSM, and it does so without a single gram of rare‑earth material.
The science‑fair shockwave
Sansone unveiled his findings at the 2022 Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the world’s largest pre‑college STEM competition. Judges—drawn from academia, NASA, and leading tech firms—peppered him with questions about rotor inertia, air‑gap flux, and thermal dissipation. The answers, and the working 3D‑printed prototype he placed on the table, earned him the competition’s top $75,000 prize—an accolade that often foreshadows professional success for winners. (Nobel laureate John C. Mather and CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang are ISEF alumni.)
How the breakthrough works
Traditional SynRMs suffer from torque ripple and limited power density, making them unattractive for passenger‑car duty cycles. Sansone tackled those weaknesses head‑on. He iterated dozens of rotor designs on CAD software, each time adjusting the “flux barriers”—strategic voids that force magnetic flux to zig‑zag through low‑reluctance iron paths while avoiding high‑reluctance air pockets. After printing the most promising shapes in reinforced polymer and press‑fitting them onto a steel shaft, he coupled the rotor to a commercial stator and off‑the‑shelf controller. Instrumented tests confirmed smoother torque curves and dramatically higher power output than literature values for classic SynRMs.
Still early—but industry is listening
To be clear, Sansone’s motor is in the proof‑of‑concept phase. He has not yet machined the rotor in high‑grade electrical steel, nor has he validated durability under automotive vibration, temperature, and high‑speed cycling. He also has not filed a patent, though he says that step is imminent once materials testing is complete. Even so, his data align with a broader industry shift. German automaker BMW and tier‑one supplier MAHLE each announced magnet‑free EV motor projects in 2021, citing cost and sustainability. Sansone’s achievement underscores how viable—and perhaps inevitable—those efforts may be.
The road ahead for Robert Sansone
The teen inventor plans to pursue mechanical or electrical engineering at university while continuing to refine his motor in partnership with local machine shops that can laser‑cut rotor laminations from silicon steel. Next steps include dynamometer testing under high load, finite‑element thermal modeling, and integration with a battery pack to simulate real‑world driving cycles. He hopes to publish peer‑reviewed results by the end of his freshman year—an audacious timeline, but one consistent with the pace of his progress so far.
Beyond trophies: a wake‑up call
Sansone’s story resonates beyond the spectacle of a teenager besting veteran engineers. It illustrates the power of open‑source CAD tools, affordable 3D printing, and STEM outreach programs that give young minds the freedom to tinker. With the global EV market projected to top 40 million annual sales by 2030, even incremental motor improvements translate into gigawatt‑hours of energy saved and megatons of CO₂ avoided. A 39‑percent torque boost and a 37‑percent efficiency gain are anything but incremental.
A cleaner drive could start in a high‑school garage
If subsequent testing upholds the early numbers, automakers may find themselves licensing technology that germinated in a Florida garage. For consumers, the payoff could be cheaper EVs with longer range and a supply chain that no longer relies on ecologically damaging rare‑earth mining. For the planet, it is one more reminder that climate solutions can arrive from unlikely places—and sometimes those places include a high‑school senior’s workbench stocked with filament spools, calipers, and an imagination not yet constrained by “impossible.”
