[richk449]

It seems amazing it has taken this long. Electric motors are so critical to national security, as well as the US economy.

I keep wondering if these folks have a realistic alternative: https://www.nironmagnetics.com/ (They claim high performance rare earth free magnets.)

[adrian_b]

There have passed too many years since they have claimed that they know how to make iron nitride magnets, but no commercial products have appeared.

The iron nitride magnets require a special crystal structure, which is not the most stable for that material, so it is difficult to find processing methods so that the material will have that crystal structure and even if the structure is produced, it might revert in time to a more stable structure, which does not have the desired magnetic properties.

Like typical for such startups, that company does not say anything about which are the roadblocks that have prevented them for so many years to make iron nitride magnets until now, but it is pretty certain that their patents are bogus and the methods described there have not been usable for making what they claim to be able to make.