A battery-less electric roadway vehicle runs for the first time in the world

The history of railways starts with steam locomotives powered by coal, then diesel-oil based engines, followed by electric motors from charged batteries, culminating in electricity from overhead cables. An analogous culmination should also come to roadway vehicles for our sustainable future. Electrification of roadways, even only on expressways, enables dynamic powering electric vehicles to cruise for a long distance with a minimum amount of battery onboard. A challenging technology to bring out this revolution is called via-wheel power transfer or V-WPT. For the first trial experiment, a prototype vehicle is developed by featuring a V-WPT device. Despite removing all batteries from the vehicle, it successfully runs on an electrified test course installed at a university campus. This will lead to the dawn of fourth-generation personal mobility.