You spoke of 12V versus 48V.  I wonder if you could wind your stator with three strands of wire kind of like using dual 14gauge to get close to 11g wire.  If you wire it with three strands and keep track of the ends you could switch it later to 48 volt by re-wiring the strands in series on each coil.

I suppose if you were a glutton for punishment you could even do this remotely with a host of relays.  At the very least when you're ready to switch to 48volt you wouldn't have to replace the stator, just re-configure the starts and stops.