They give a quote on a practical application:
> The resulting Segway enjoyed a 50-percent increase in range, and four times the torque, which boosted the vehicle’s top speed and allowed it to climb a steep 20-percent grade.
If that scales up linearly to electric cars, that's quite a boost.
If that's the case, however, it doesn't really bode well for them, as their efficiency gains will not translate to the high-RPM, high-power motors used in cars. I'm not EE, but I do know that most engineering involves making trade-offs. So I wouldn't be surprised to learn that techniques to improve low-power, low-RPM efficiency probably sacrifices high-power, high-RPM efficiency.
Heat losses come in many forms:
- resistive losses in wiring
- resistive losses in the batteries themselves
(their Ri is nowhere near zero)
- switching losses in the powertrain
- slip losses between the field and the rotor
If a piece of gear does not get its 'advertised performance' that can mean a defective product, deceptive advertising or plainly bad design, or a combination of all of these.
Having a very expensive motor isn't suddenly going to solve any of that, you'll get an advertised range of 15 km while being able to do only 10 and you'll still feel cheated.
I don't feel cheated, I'm just saying that even a modest bump in efficiency could make a big difference to this kind of vehicle, especially if affected both the propulsion and regen side of things.