A drive core is the heart of a capital drive: a field coil run by a control unit, behind shielding, with tanks and seals for its propellant and raw exotics at its centre, put together in an Assembler. It goes into the heavy thruster and the wayfarer, and two go into every gate core.
A drive core takes every native resource: iron, copper, carbon, silicate, ice and exotics. Its exotics come from the Deadzone, and its ice from the Static outward, most of all the Fade.