Due to rapid electrification in transportation, the development of green cars are dramatically increased. The permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) with rare earth PMs are widely used in electric vehicle applications because of its excellent performance. However, the PMSM motor needs larger volume of rare earth PMs and it increases the cost of the machine. Therefore, the electric motors with less PMs are required. This paper deeply investigates the performance of both the motor models for electric vehicle (EV) applications, in terms of efficiency, torque capability, power factor, torque-speed characteristics, torque ripple and demagnetization. With less permanent magnet volume, the reluctance torque should be increased to meet the losses in permanent magnet torque. This is achieved by increasing the saliency ratio. Both the motor models are designed with same number of poles, stator slots, stator outer diameter, stack length and rotor geometry. The control trajectories like MTPA and flux weakening of both SynRM and PMASynRM type motors are compared by using FEA.