Why is neodymium oxide consumption only about 90,000 tonnes globally despite booming EV and robot demand?

Why is neodymium oxide consumption only about 90,000 tonnes globally despite booming EV and robot demand?
Global neodymium oxide consumption is under 90,000 tonnes per year, even with electric vehicles and robotics expanding rapidly. The reason is simple: rare earths are not actually scarce. A tonne of typical bastnasite concentrate yields only 50-80 kg of neodymium oxide, but the raw material cost is negligible, under 600 yuan per tonne of concentrate. The bottleneck is never ore, it is refining. A standard medium-scale neodymium oxide production line costs 300-800 million yuan in China, and at least 20 countries have the technical ability to build one. Yet none do commercially because the economics fail without Chinese scale and supply chain integration. Western attempts to build independent capacity face 10x construction costs and must import half the equipment from China, making them viable only with government subsidies or military contracts.