From what I have understood about this motor is that the magentic shielding is imperative, in conjunction with the right angles and distances.
Steel seems to be the cheapest and best material fot htis purpose. Aluminium has a low magnetic attraction and does not act as a flux deflector.

I seems that when one gets all these components working in unison to the point of a working motor, the effect does not last past 20 minutes. For some reason the flux energy from the repulsion effect, dissipates over time requiring a constant change of permanent magnets. This could be the reason that we have not heard any more details about this motor.

So yes it works, but is not sustainable.

If this is all true then the next plausable step would be to design a stator that is pulsed from an electric field rather than a permanent magnet.