[kamocat]

Personally, what I'd like is 3-phase motors. If you chose a motor within the correct speed and torque range, you need no gearing whatsoever, and can actually direct drive every wheel with its own motor. (crab drive with traction control, anyone?) There would be no need for a CVT.
However, there are some good reasons we haven't done this yet:

Luminary micro doesn't make a polyphase motor controller. While we could theoretically use 3 AC motor controllers to control torque, we would still require a variable-frequency 3-phase inverter to control speed.

AC signals can't be treated the same as DC signals. Calculating wattage and resistance is different, and you have to account for inductive reactance. Also, FIRST wiring standards would have to increase greatly to deal with 240v power.

I haven't investigated it, but I'm pretty sure 3-phase motors of a usable scale to us are mainly used on milling machines, and thus are upwards of $150 for the motor alone. This definitely isn't something FIRST can get for free.


Anyways, I figured I'd add my thoughts to the wish-list.