From a Mile-High Idea to an Australian Motor Revolution: How Black Square Engineering Brought the Zeus Motor to Life

When the Global Financial Crisis hit in the late 2000s, many engineering dreams were shelved. But for one engineer, that pause sparked a whole new way of thinking about motion and power.

Tom Hopkins had been working on a monorail project linking Denver to Vail in Colorado — a bold piece of transport infrastructure that never made it off the drawing board. When the project was abandoned, Tom found himself with time, a head full of ideas, and a stack of monorail design files.

“Imagine a monorail running on an endless loop,” Tom thought, “but instead of moving people — it was generating torque.”

That thought experiment evolved into the concept for a highly efficient permanent magnet radial flux motor — a design that reconsidered the principles behind traditional electric motor design.

Together with co-developer Keith Klontz, Tom built a series of prototypes that consistently outperformed expectations. Over the next decade, the Zeus Motor Industries team refined the concept, pushing performance further with each iteration.

But like many brilliant ideas, the road from prototype to production was steep. The team had a world-class design but needed an engineering partner capable of transforming it into a commercially viable, manufacturable product.

That’s wher Black Square Engineering came in.

Turning a breakthrough concept into a buildable product

Black Square Engineering was engaged to take this complex, unconventional motor and make it ready for the real world. That meant more than just drawings and analysis — it required rethinking the manufacturing process, materials, cooling, and assembly from the ground up.

Blending their serious creative, design and development experience with out of the box thinking to tackle novel challenges across the development process, the Black Square team have engineered the Zeus Motor into a robust, repeatable, and production-ready product line, now being built right here in Australia.

From a Mile High idea born in Colorado to full-scale Australian design and manufacture, the Zeus Motor has come a long way — and it’s only just getting started.

What makes the Zeus Motor remarkable

At its core, the Zeus Motor redefines what’s possible in electric motor performance.

• Ultra-high efficiency: The Zeus Motor exceeds the upper limit of today’s IE5 efficiency standards. On a continuous curve, it sits at what we term IE6++  or, extrapolated, close to IE8.

• Compact power: It delivers equivalent torque at roughly one-third the size and a quarter the weight of conventional motors.

• Passive cooling: The motor operates without external cooling systems, simplifying installation and reducing energy draw.

• Broad rev range: Maintaining IE6++ efficiency from 100–3600 RPM, the Zeus Motor can replace multiple traditional 2-, 4-, 6-, and 8-pole motors typically used in variable load applications.

• Cleaner power quality: Its architecture naturally mitigates harmonic distortion, reducing grid interference and ensuring stable power delivery.

  
  

This combination of efficiency, versatility, and power quality positions the Zeus Motor as a leader in industrial electrification — especially as new energy standards increasingly mandate the use of variable frequency drives (VFDs) to manage efficiency in large-scale equipment.

Powering a more efficient future

From HVAC systems and pumping operations to renewable energy and industrial automation, the Zeus Motor’s performance profile makes it a compelling alternative to legacy motor technologies. Its broad rev range means it can replace entire multi-motor arrays, simplifying systems and reducing lifecycle costs.

In a world where electrical grids are under growing demand, every gain in efficiency counts — and Black Square Engineering’s work in making the Zeus Motor a reality represents a significant leap toward smarter, more sustainable electrification.

Thinking beyond convention

For the team at Black Square Engineering, the project reflects what they do best: tackling complex, novel engineering challenges and finding ways to make them real.

“It’s not often you get to take something that started as a thought experiment and turn it into a market-ready product,” says the Black Square team. “This motor isn’t just efficient — it changes the way we think about electric motion.”

With production now underway, the Zeus Motor stands poised to reshape expectations in industrial motor design, and proudly, it’s being built right here in Australia.