What if you had an electric motor that could put out five times the startup torque of a normal electric motor its size, and still perform as well as normal at high speeds? You could revolutionize several industries. And that's what people at Chorus Motors are trying to do.
Their motors, just beginning to come out of the lab and into the sales-room, could make vehicles such as electric / hybrid cars much lighter, thus making them more efficient; and they could do the same with any number of things from elevators to ocean-liners. Using the motors as generators, you could make wind or water turbines handle wide ranges of speeds much better than they do.
The news right now is that you could have commercial airplanes with motors in their front wheels to drive themselves around on the tarmac, instead of the current solutions, which are: firing their jets to more forward (which is horribly inefficient) and having the airport's little push-cars push them backward (which is time-consuming and has safety concerns). Boeing thinks this idea will save airlines a lot of money; the facts that it will also reduce oil use, emissions, and airport noise-pollution are nice bonuses. Boeing liked the idea so much they formed a partnership with Chorus Motors last month, to start making it happen.
[full disclosure: I do some engineering work for Chorus Motors. However, I'm not saying they're brilliant because I work for them, I work for them because I think they're brilliant. ...And yes, that logo is a porpoise with a pickaxe. That I can't vouch for.]
