Schpankme and Steven,

I am more than happy to let you guys continue with this discussion, though it is a bit off-topic. The use of permanent magnets in these type of configurations is very similar to Flynn's Parallel Path technology, and is known to be useful for increasing torque. It does not increase efficiency, however, since it takes more power to push the PM field out of the core with the coil in the first place. You pay for doing the work, one way or the other. If you want to switch fast, you need more voltage to establish the current flow. If you don't apply more voltage, the rise-time of the current is very slow because of the increased inductance.

The test video is a little misleading, since it only shows the "steady state" current, and not the start surge and total power required to run the coil in both cases. It allows the physical structures to be a little smaller for the power, but does not raise the COP of the system by much. For lifting cars up at the end of a crane, this can definitely save energy, since twice the field strength can be created for half the power.

These ideas CAN be incorporated into the magnetic attraction motor designs, but they make field switching more complicated, and require more input power to do it.

Schpankme, if you are interested in building a model experimental motor, I recommend you start with something smaller than 22 inches in diameter, in case some aspects of your design don't work quite the way you intend. Just a suggestion.

Peter