Modal Motors: Breaking the Rare-Earth Dependency With a New Generation of American-Made Drives

The global race to reshore advanced manufacturing to the United States is underway, but according to industry veteran Michael Van Steenburg, most efforts are built on a fragile foundation. While competitors move production of electric motors home, they continue to rely on rare-earth magnets that remain overwhelmingly controlled by China. Van Steenburg’s new startup, Modal Motors, is taking a fundamentally different path: building high-torque, ultra-efficient motors that require no rare-earth materials at all, breaking the dependency at its very source.

The Bottleneck: Rare Earths and Geopolitical Risk

The stakes could scarcely be higher. Rare-earth elements are the invisible backbone of modern technology, found in everything from drones and robotics to electric vehicles and wind turbines. Yet processing and refining these materials is dominated by a single nation: China. As noted in reporting from Bloomberg, export flows have tightened ahead of high-level diplomatic meetings, underscoring how easily supply can be weaponised. Van Steenburg puts it plainly: “China’s already flexed its muscles a couple of times.”

Other reshoring efforts, he argues, treat the symptom rather than the cause. “They’re basically knocking off Chinese motors and just doing it in the U.S.,” he observes. “They’re hoping that the U.S. rare-earth magnet system is going to get up to speed fast enough… It’s still going to be a while longer before they can actually replace China.” Domestic mining and refining capacity is years away from matching current demand, leaving even “American-made” motors dependent on imported materials.

The Solution: No Magnets, Higher Performance

Modal Motors addresses the problem with patented Transverse Flux Motor (TFM) architecture a design that eliminates rare-earth magnets entirely while delivering superior torque density and efficiency. The company is advancing two distinct products:

• Modular Motor: A compact, lightweight drive optimised for drones, industrial fans, blowers, and actuators engineered to minimise mass without sacrificing power or reliability.

• Hybrid Enigma Drive™: A radical planar, or flat, motor configuration that delivers multiple inputs and outputs from a single unit, fitting into low-profile spaces where traditional motors cannot.

Both are built around a 100% U.S.-and-allied supply chain, ensuring control over every stage of production. The technology draws on $50 million in previous OEM motor research and development and is protected by more than 25 issued patents, with third-party validation confirming its performance claims.

A Career in the Making and a Full Circle

For Van Steenburg, this mission spans not years but decades. In the late 1990s, he worked on a hybrid gas-electric drivetrain that China sought to adopt for its ambitious “People’s Car” project, reported on by The New York Times in 1994. Then as now, he saw the shifting global landscape firsthand and watched as China steadily consolidated control over critical mineral resources worldwide.

“I’ve watched a slow-motion train wreck as China’s been going around the world, grabbing mines, grabbing mineral rights… monopolising the entire rare-earth supply chain,” he reflects. What began as an irony, once offering technology to a market now seen as a rival has evolved into a purpose: building the technological alternative that ensures national capacity does not depend on foreign goodwill.

Competing on the Global Stage

Modal Motors will present its technology next month at TechCrunch Disrupt 200, where Van Steenburg will make his case to investors, engineers, and industry leaders. The timing is urgent: as drones, robotics, and electric propulsion grow central to economic and defence strategy, the ability to manufacture critical components independently is no longer just an economic advantage it is a matter of security.

The company’s message is straightforward: reshoring is not enough if it merely relocates assembly while leaving the supply chain unchanged. True independence means rethinking the technology itself starting from the ground up.

Engineering Independence

Modal Motors represents more than a startup; it is a bet on a different kind of industrial future. By designing motors that do not require the materials China dominates, Van Steenburg and his team are offering a way forward that does not depend on waiting for mines to open or trade relationships to shift. It is hard engineering, built on experience, protected by innovation, and rooted in one clear principle: the most reliable supply chain is the one you do not need to worry about.