Five years ago, General Motors made a supply-chain bet on an American company that hadn’t even produced the magnets GM needed yet. That decision is finally approaching its payoff.
The automaker began working with MP Materials in 2021, when pandemic shutdowns and the semiconductor shortage were exposing just how vulnerable globally stretched automotive supply chains could be. GM saw rare-earth magnets as another potential weak point and decided to address it early.
That meant backing the development of a domestic supply chain rather than continuing to depend so heavily on overseas production. GM’s philosophy, as global procurement and supply chain chief Shilpan Amin recently put it, is essentially to “buy where you build.”
Five years later, Automotive News reports that GM is preparing to receive production rare-earth magnets from MP Materials. Commercial shipments are expected to begin before the end of 2026, marking a significant milestone for a partnership that started when MP Materials was still years away from large-scale magnet production.
From A California Mine To A Texas Factory
Rare-earth elements are crucial ingredients in the powerful permanent magnets used by many electric motors. The challenge isn’t simply finding the elements; separating, processing, and turning them into automotive-grade magnets at scale requires substantial infrastructure.
MP Materials operates the Mountain Pass mine and processing operation in California’s Mojave Desert. Material from there feeds into the company’s growing U.S. manufacturing network, including its 250,000-square-foot Independence facility in Fort Worth, Texas.
That facility produces neodymium-iron-boron permanent magnets destined for applications including GM’s electric traction motors. MP Materials produced rare-earth metal for GM before beginning magnet manufacturing, with magnets subsequently supplied to the automaker for qualification testing.
GM engineers have already evaluated the components in prototype motors. Commercial deliveries are expected to follow during the fourth quarter of 2026.
Why GM Started Five Years Early
The timing of the original agreement is important. GM and MP Materials announced their long-term supply arrangement in 2021, when automakers were still struggling with semiconductor shortages and other pandemic-related disruptions.
Those problems encouraged GM to rethink how far critical components and materials should travel before reaching its factories. Rare-earth magnets were particularly important because the global supply chain for the materials used to make them is heavily concentrated in China.
Building an alternative couldn’t happen overnight. MP Materials CEO James Litinsky has acknowledged that when discussions with GM began, the company had the people and raw material but hadn’t yet made a magnet.
That meant GM was effectively committing to a supplier years before the finished product would reach its vehicles. The approach carried execution risk, but it also gave MP Materials a major automotive customer while its U.S. magnet operations were being developed.
The First Magnets Are Almost Here
MP Materials has already supplied magnets to GM for testing, and commercial shipments are expected to start by the end of this year. The company is also developing a much larger magnet-manufacturing facility in Northlake, Texas, as it expands domestic capacity.
For GM, the immediate benefit is another source for components essential to its electric motors. Longer term, it gives the automaker a supply chain stretching from rare-earth material mined in California to magnets manufactured in Texas and ultimately installed in vehicles built for North America.
Five years is a long time to wait for an automotive supply agreement to bear fruit. Considering how difficult it is to create an industrial supply chain from mine to finished magnet, GM’s early move is starting to look rather well timed.