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Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Wednesday, May 7th. I'm Victoria Craig for the Wall Street Journal.

Today, a show about cars, China, and the way tech industries in the world's two biggest economies

are actually reliant on each other

to succeed. First, we'll look at a startup that's trying to end America's dependence on China

for rare earth's metals by excluding them in the design of new electric motors. Then, we talk a lot

about the dependence of America's tech titans on China for critical components. But the inverse is also true.

Our deputy Beijing bureau chief walks us through how the trade war has exposed China's dependence

on the U.S. for chips that drive its own auto industry.

But first, building an electric-powered motor without rare earth's metals, say it ain't so.

Rare earth's metals are used to create critical tech components, and they've been a focus for

the Trump administration recently, specifically how to source more of them from the U.S.

But what if we don't need them for one big use case, cars?

WS.J Tech columnist Christopher Mims says it's a real possibility and it could lead to more

American-made vehicles. Chris, how does this electric motor minus rare earths work?

There's a company called Conifer. They're based in Silicon Valley. And they have found a cheap way to make a rare earth's free motor. Their first application is going to be like Vespas-style scooters. Turns out it's a huge market. There's a billion of those in the world. But, you know, this could go into those vacuum cleaners. It could go into your HVAC system. It could be scaled up. It could go into electric vehicles. So that's a big deal. It just means local supply chains for motors, eventually

all over the world, because the only thing you need to make these motors are some power

electronics, some steel, and some rust. They actually used just iron-based magnets. It's oxidized iron, make it from rust.

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