A large majority of current road-going electric vehicles use two new technologies. One is Lithium-Ion Batteries, and the other is electric traction motors. I’ve written about the former extensively, and my recent major paper on these is described and linked in this paper.
I have also written about EV motors, but not recently. This post will fix this tardiness.
Like Lithium-Ion Batteries, traction motors have a materials problem, rare-earth metals. There is no question that the lightest, most efficient, most long-lived motors use rare-earth metals, mainly by using neodymium-iron-boron permanent-magnets. Neodymium is the rare earth element here, but boron is also increasing in price. The latter is due to demand by a number of widespread markets, with automotive being one.