There is something... weird about this. this tech has existed.... a long time. And I am not familiar with what is common in electric cars so may be missing something obvious but thought this was already how it was done. let me explain my limited understanding.

With ac motors electromagnets can be used in the rotor. there is even a super clever way to do it where the electromagnet in the rotor is driven wirelessly via induction. there are some downsides but having no physical sliding electrical connection to the rotor is a huge upside. The ac can be dynamically formed from DC via high speed switching(transistors, in industry often called a VFD).

Due to the upsides of ac induction motors I sort of assumed this was already what was found in cars. I am a bit surprised to find out there were rare earth magnets in the first place.

They even use regular carbon brushes to supply power to the magnet. Munro has a teardown video for a similar motor for Nissan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFmp9ODkCA8

So does it consume significantly more electricity?