The story headline was OK, "Toyota tries to break reliance on China." with a sub headline "Company seeks to develop electric motor without costly, tightly controlled rare earth metals." So far so good.
Then we get to some statements indicating this writer is fundamentally ignorant of things electrical. "All electric motors rely on magnets to make them work". Not true. Most electric motors, including the ones found around the house, don't use magnets at all.
Then we have "induction motors found in such devices as kitchen mixers". Not true, kitchen mixers use universal (AC-DC) motors. Induction motors are used to power fans and vacuum cleaners, not kitchen mixers.
In actually fact, very satisfactory electric motors, which used no magnets, were developed to power trolley cars better than 100 years ago. Such motors could power electric or hybrid cars.
Another type of motor, the AC induction motor, is nearly as old and, with clever solid state controllers would work fine. The clever solid state controllers would take DC from the batteries and turn it into AC for the motors. The clever controller would vary the frequency of the AC power to control the speed of the AC motor. Large railroad locomotives use this scheme today. The new AC locomotives are somewhat more powerful than the traditional DC locomotives that make up most of the world wide locomotive fleet. They are also more costly which accounts for the survival of the older DC locomotive design.
In short the writer thinks Toyota is working on a break thru technology. I think Toyota is doing a routine research and development project, drawing upon well known technology, to design a motor which will be optimum for their electric and hybrid cars.
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