After more than 100 years of development, rotating electric machines are a mature industrial product. Nevertheless, improvements are still possible for specific applications, and it is likely that the major evolution will be promoted by new materials and unconventional structures. Till now, plastic materials are an infrequent choice for the electric machines structural parts, but pioneering applications, such as aeronautical components, let some technological scouting: a low-weight/high-efficiency plastic axial flux motor for a solar flying platform is presented as an example of combined new-material/new-geometry development. The basic design aspects and the prototyping choices are presented and discussed together with the first experimental results.