Schaeffler Presses Magnets Out of Scrap Rotors in Hungary

Schaeffler's E-Mobility plant in Szombathely, Hungary has developed a process to press rare earth magnets out of defective electric motor rotors and reuse them in new rotors, a project called "Pioneering Sustainability" worked on by seven people in Hungary and two in Germany.

A defective electric motor rotor is an expensive thing to throw away. Buried inside it are permanent magnets made from rare earth elements — the neodymium-iron-boron blocks that give an EV traction motor its torque density and that account for a disproportionate share of the motor's material cost. Until now, at most plants, a rotor that fails inspection takes those magnets with it into scrap.

Specialists at Schaeffler's E-Mobility plant in Szombathely, Hungary have built a process to stop that happening. According to Charged EVs, the team recovers rare earth magnets from defective rotors by pressing them out of the faulty parts, then puts them back into new rotors. The company calls the initiative "Pioneering Sustainability." Seven people in Szombathely and two colleagues in Germany worked on it.

Why pressing beats shredding

Most rare earth recycling that gets discussed publicly is chemical: shred the assembly, leach the material, separate the elements, and re-make magnet alloy from the recovered oxides. That route works, but it is energy-intensive, capital-hungry and it destroys all the value that was added when the raw oxide was turned into a sintered, magnetised, precisely dimensioned block.

What the Szombathely team describes is different in kind. Pressing a magnet out of a rotor lamination stack preserves the component itself. If the magnet comes out intact and within tolerance, the recovered part is not feedstock — it is a magnet. That skips alloying, sintering, machining, coating and magnetising entirely.

The catch, and it is the reason this is engineering work rather than an obvious idea, is that magnets in a rotor are not designed to come out. They are inserted into slots and typically bonded or mechanically retained, then the whole assembly is balanced. Getting one out without cracking it — sintered NdFeB is brittle — and without deforming the lamination stack is a mechanical problem specific to each rotor design. That a nine-person cross-border team was needed to solve it says something about how much of this work is fixturing, force control and inspection rather than chemistry.

The economics sit on the scrap rate, not the recycling rate

It is worth being precise about what this process addresses. It is not, on the evidence given, an end-of-life recycling scheme for motors coming back from vehicles a decade from now. It is an in-plant recovery loop for parts that fail during manufacturing.

That makes the value depend on something manufacturers rarely publish: how many rotors a plant scraps. In a mature line the figure is small. In a ramping line for a new motor programme — which is what much of the European e-mobility supply base has been building for the past several years — it is materially higher, and every scrapped rotor carries its magnet set into the bin with it.

The savings therefore come in three forms:

• Material cost avoided — magnets are among the most expensive inputs in a traction motor, and recovered ones do not need to be bought again.
• Waste disposal and scrap accounting — a rotor that yields its magnets back is a cheaper failure than one that does not.
• Supply resilience — magnets already inside the factory are not subject to lead times, export licensing or freight.

That third point is the one with the longest tail. Rare earth magnet production is heavily concentrated, and European and North American automakers have spent recent years trying to reduce their exposure to a supply chain they do not control. Recovering magnets from in-house scrap does not solve that concentration. But a plant that reuses its own magnets buys fewer of them, and in a constrained market the marginal purchase is the expensive one.

Hungary's role in the European EV motor map

Szombathely sits in western Hungary, close to the Austrian border, in a corridor that has become one of the denser clusters of automotive electrification capacity in central Europe. Labour costs are lower than in Germany while proximity to German OEM assembly plants is close to ideal. Schaeffler's decision to run the project out of the Hungarian site, with support from two colleagues in Germany, follows that pattern: the process engineering happens where the parts are made.

It also matters for how the process spreads. A recovery method developed on a production line, by the people running it, tends to be transferable to sister plants building similar rotors — assuming the rotor geometry is shared across programmes. A method developed in a central R&D lab often is not.

The market backdrop for anything EV-adjacent

The announcement lands in a market that has not been kind to the electrification trade. As of the most recent close on 4 September 2026, the S&P 500 tracker (NYSEARCA: SPY) finished at $770.19, down 0.39% on the day from a prior close of $773.17, having traded between $769.00 and $772.87. The Dow 30 tracker (NYSEARCA: DIA) closed at $534.08, off 0.53%. The Nasdaq 100 tracker (NASDAQ: QQQ) was the exception, closing at $718.96, up 0.18%.

Broad-market direction is not the point here, though. Process improvements of this kind do not move a diversified supplier's share price on the day they are announced. They show up slowly, in gross margin on an e-mobility segment that has been a margin drag across the European supplier base, and in a bill of materials that becomes marginally less hostage to rare earth pricing.

What to watch from here

Three things would tell you whether this is a plant-level improvement or a group-level capability. First, whether Schaeffler quantifies the volume of magnets recovered or the cost avoided — a number would signal confidence that the process is stable. Second, whether the method is rolled out to other e-mobility sites, which would indicate the pressing technique generalises across rotor designs. Third, whether it is extended beyond manufacturing scrap to warranty returns and eventually end-of-life motors, which is where the far larger pool of recoverable magnets will sit once the first big wave of EVs reaches retirement.

For now it is a nine-person fix to a specific waste stream. Those are frequently the ones that compound.

Key facts

• Project location: Schaeffler E-Mobility plant, Szombathely, Hungary
• Team size: Seven people in Szombathely, two in Germany
• Method: Rare earth magnets pressed out of defective rotors, reused in new rotors
• Market backdrop: S&P 500 tracker SPY closed at $770.19, -0.39%, as of 4 Sep 2026 20:00 GMT

Frequently asked questions

What exactly did Schaeffler develop?

Specialists at Schaeffler's E-Mobility plant in Szombathely, Hungary created a process for recovering rare earth magnets from defective electric motor rotors and reusing those magnets in new rotors. The magnets are pressed out of the faulty parts. Schaeffler refers to the initiative as "Pioneering Sustainability." Seven people in Szombathely and two in Germany worked on the project.

Why are rare earth magnets in EV motors valuable?

Permanent magnets made from rare earth elements give electric traction motors their torque and power density in a compact package. They are among the most expensive material inputs in a motor, and global production of the magnets is heavily concentrated in a small number of suppliers, which makes both price and availability a persistent concern for automakers and their suppliers.

How is pressing magnets out different from chemical recycling?

Chemical recycling shreds the assembly and leaches out the rare earth elements, recovering raw material that must then be re-alloyed, sintered, machined and magnetised. Pressing recovers the finished magnet itself, preserving all the manufacturing value already embedded in it. That skips several energy-intensive production steps entirely, provided the magnet survives extraction intact.

Does this apply to motors coming out of old EVs?

On the facts released, the process addresses defective rotors — parts that fail during manufacturing — rather than motors returning from vehicles at end of life. Extending the technique to warranty returns and retired vehicles would open up a far larger pool of recoverable magnets, but that has not been announced. It is currently an in-plant recovery loop.

Why is the work being done in Hungary?

Szombathely, in western Hungary near the Austrian border, sits in one of central Europe's denser clusters of automotive electrification capacity, with lower labour costs than Germany and close proximity to German vehicle assembly. Schaeffler runs an E-Mobility plant there, and the process engineering was developed on site by the people operating the production line.

What were markets doing when this was reported?

As of the last trade on 4 September 2026 at 20:00 GMT, the S&P 500 tracker SPY closed at $770.19, down 0.39% from a prior close of $773.17. The Dow 30 tracker DIA closed at $534.08, down 0.53%. The Nasdaq 100 tracker QQQ closed at $718.96, up 0.18%. Markets were closed.

Sources

• Schaeffler develops process to recover and reuse rare earth magnets from EV motor rotors — Charged EVs

Photo: YIHAI LASER · Pexels Licence — source