A growing number of automakers and suppliers are working on electric vehicle (EV) motors that either do not contain rare earths or dramatically reduce the use of materials that are dominated by China. The world's largest EV maker said earlier this year that it has cut heavy rare earths by 25% per vehicle and aims to go rare-earth free in its next-generation EV models. BMW uses no rare earth permanent magnets today and has developed a magnet-free externally excited synchronous machine (EESM), which generates a magnetic field using electric current, that will be included in all of its next-generation EVs.