Japan’s Proterial – formerly known as Hitachi Metals – has unveiled a new alloy for use in electric motor cores, which it claims could drive power efficiency gains by up to 5%. Proterial claims this product will also help alleviate pressure on rare earth material markets by using ferrite magnets with less detrimental effects than it would usually involve. Proterial has been light on details as to what exactly this mystery material is, other than calling it a laminated bonded amorphous alloy ribbon, which it could only convert into material suitable for motor cores through the company’s advanced transformer core technology. Proterial claims that the alloy is 5x stronger than a standard non-oriented electrical steel sheet, creating issues related to…