Electric vehicles trickled slowly into the market at first, but with proven technology, better performance, and lower operating costs—coupled with rising concerns about emissions from gasoline-powered cars—the rush is on not only to buy them, but to build them. A handful of critical bottlenecks stand between matching supply to demand.
Extracting and processing these rare earth metals also create troubling environmental impacts. What we need are alternatives, such as switched reluctance motors that don’t need such materials. SRMs rely on great software, and readily available and recyclable materials such as electrical steel and copper. Using such technology would stabilize the supply chain, bring down prices, and create far less pollution. We need to build factories to get such next-generation electric motors to market.