No Rare Earth Metals Needed Here: Honda Xcelerator Ventures’ Newest Investment Makes Motor
October 31, 2025
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The United States’ vulnerability to China’s near-monopoly on rare earth metals has been made clear by recent global tariff wars, leaving many Americans wondering how the nation could cope without these vital materials.
Perhaps one answer is to develop technologies that don’t need them. One company aiming to do that is Enedym Inc. The Canadian startup is developing electric motors that don’t rely on the hard-to-get metals.
“While most of the coverage and attention has been on mining and processing of rare earth metals outside China, we believe a much better approach is to remove the need for rare earth metals as much as possible in electric motor applications,” Dr. Ali Emadi, Enedym’s founder, president and CEO, said in a LinkedIn message.
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Enedym is working on next-generation switched reluctance motors, electric powertrains, powertrain controls, and similar technologies that are used in the automotive, residential and commercial industrial infrastructure, wind power, and other industries.
The startup, which already has more than 70 patents and patent applications to its credit, recently received an investment from Honda Motor Co. through its global open innovation program, Honda Xcelerator Ventures, which facilitates collaboration between startups and the Japanese automaker.
The amount of Honda’s investment was undisclosed. Enedym also raised $3 million in seed funding in September 2019, a $15 million Series A round in June 2021, and earlier this year, it won an $800,000 grant from the Canadian government to support development of powertrains used in airport vehicles.
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“We have redefined what switched reluctance motors can do. Through proprietary motor configurations, cutting-edge control strategies, and comprehensive design optimization, we have overcome the traditional limitations of SRMs. Our high-performance motors are quiet, efficient, powerful, and scalable,” Emadi said in a statement. “We are excited to deepen our partnership with Honda and welcome them as our strategic investor.”
“Most electric propulsion motors today use permanent magnets made from rare earth metals, which are expensive and environmentally challenging,” Manabu Ozawa, Managing Executive Officer of Honda, said in a statement. “Enedym motors do not use any permanent magnets, and Honda has high hopes for its potential.”
The future for these types of innovations appears bright. The global electric motor market is valued at $150.9 billion and is forecasted to grow 89% to $285.9 billion by 2035, according to a recent report by Future Market Insights, a market analysis firm.
Future Market Insights added that the overall market size is expected to grow by nearly 1.9 times during the same period, thanks to “accelerating electric vehicle adoption, expanding industrial automation, and rising demand for energy-efficient motor solutions across diverse manufacturing and commercial applications.”
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Emadi, who is also the Canada Excellence Research Chair Laureate and runs the research group at the McMaster Automotive Resource Centre at McMaster University from where Enedym operates, said the new investment will be used to accelerate the startup’s patented motor technology development and ramp up its operations.
In addition to developing electric motors completely free from any rare earth metals, Enedym has also developed a disruptive digitization platform to design motors in less time and with less cost than existing methods.
Enedym’s main competitors are typically permanent magnet motors, most of which are manufactured with rare earth metals, such as interior permanent magnet motors, Emadi said.
There are established motor companies and automotive suppliers with such permanent magnet motors, whose uses include automotive propulsion applications.
“We believe our switched reluctance motors provide an attractive and practical alternative for several of those applications. We have developed our rare earth metals free motor technologies over the past 14 years, first 7-8 years at McMaster Automotive Resource Centre (MARC), McMaster University (Mac), and then at Enedym for the past seven years,” Emadi said over LinkedIn.
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This article No Rare Earth Metals Needed Here: Honda Xcelerator Ventures’ Newest Investment Makes Motors Without the Hard-to-Get Materials originally appeared on Benzinga.com
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