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I posted a few responses here while the board was getting reconfigured, so they got lost.
From what I can tell, you should be able to drive an IPM motor with a bike or RC controller but you might not be able to get the full rated power from it or the efficiency might go bad at high load. A sensorless controller might be the easiest. I suspect it will be pretty good up to about 80% power.

There are some sensorless control schemes made for IPM motors based on measuring the inductance at high frequency and deducing the rotor position from that. This doesn't really work so well for normal external magnet designs.
 
It works to run them on just the PM field, just makes a reduced torque motor at low RPM, but it can still be very efficient.

As we saw Arlins leaf motor (IPM) dyno big HP and torque, and it run a lebowski brain to control it, I would simply use that brain and put your own effort into the power stage.
 
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