Honda R&D, in collaboration with Taisei and Taisei Rotec, has developed “underlying technology” for a magnetic coupling wireless power transfer (WPT) road system. The system is designed to wirelessly charge EVs, including large commercial vehicles, while in motion. The three companies plan to begin demonstration testing on public roads in Japan in 2027.
The system features: Honda’s high-power-density power receiver and transmitter units, which are compatible with DC power distribution; Taisei’s DC power supply system; and Taisei Rotec’s technology for embedding equipment in road surfaces.
Honda has been working on dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) technology since 2021. Honda, Taisei and Taisei Rotec began researching and developing the magnetic coupling WPT road system in 2025.
Honda plans to focus initially on practical applications in logistics and transportation, in which the technology could help address the operating requirements of commercial fleets.
NEU Battery Materials, which recycles lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, has closed a $7.6-million funding round to scale up LFP recycling. Venture capital firm Shift4Good and Singapore government-backed investor SGInnovate co-led the round.
The funding follows the commissioning of NEU’s 1,300-ton-per-year factory in Singapore. The capital will support the ramp-up of battery-grade lithium production from LFP feedstock such as cathode production scrap and end-of-life black mass, as well as the company’s international expansion. NEU also plans to further reduce production costs and expand its network of partners.
LFP accounts for over 90% of battery energy storage systems worldwide and over 55% of all EV batteries, according to the International Energy Agency.
NEU says its patented electrochemical redox targeting process, designed specifically for recycling LFP batteries, is a world first. The process is driven by electricity and water and uses regenerative chemicals. NEU says the process generates less waste and has up to 83% lower emissions than conventional recycling methods such as hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy.
“The funding will catalyse the scale-up and deployment of our modular LFP recycling technology, enabling us to expand the production of vital battery-grade lithium, and at progressively lower costs to our customers,” said Bryan Oh, co-founder and CEO of NEU Battery Materials.
“NEU plays a strategic role in the battery value chain, and we remain committed to supporting its growth,” said Hsien-Hui Tong, Executive Director of Investments at SGInnovate.
“LFP battery recycling is both a decarbonisation and an industrial sovereignty imperative,” said Sebastien Guillaud, co-founder and Managing Partner at Shift4Good. “NEU has developed a differentiated solution to recover battery-grade lithium from LFP feedstock and is now entering a new phase of industrial scale-up, thereby helping build more resilient supply chains.”
TDK has introduced the Micronas HAR 3025, a dual-die motor position sensor designed for safety-critical automotive and industrial applications.
The sensor is intended for electric power steering and x-by-wire motor control, including steer-by-wire actuators and brake-by-wire motors, and for high-voltage traction motor commutation.
The HAR 3025 stacks two independent dies in one 4 × 4 mm QFN24 package. The dies are aligned so that both occupy the same magnetic field and generate synchronous position signals, which enables a plausibility comparison at system level. Each die uses an array of six Hall plates and internal signal processing designed to suppress external magnetic stray fields in accordance with ISO 11452-8:2015. TDK says the stray-field suppression allows angular measurement without magnetic shielding or strong target magnets.
TDK says the HAR 3025 is ASIL D ready as a Safety Element out of Context (SEooC) under ISO 26262:2018 and that each die fulfills ASIL D metrics. If one die fails, the other remains fully operational and ASIL D compliant. Integrated diagnostics monitor the supply voltage, clock, temperature, Hall signal processing, EEPROM and configuration registers. When a fault is detected, the affected die’s outputs switch to high impedance, so the ECU can identify the fault using external pull-up or pull-down resistors.
The sensor provides redundant differential or single-ended sine and cosine analog outputs, and the microcontroller or ECU calculates the absolute angle. Gain, offset, zero angle, orthogonality and magnetic signal bandwidth can be programmed through the sensor’s output pin, so no additional programming pin is needed. Four selectable amplifier bandwidths from 4.6 kHz to 70.5 kHz allow designers to balance delay time against angular noise.
The HAR 3025 supports 360° angle measurement for motor commutation at up to 60,000 rpm. It operates from a 3.0 to 5.5 V supply over a junction temperature range of -40° C to 170° C, and the maximum ambient temperature is 150° C. Total angular error with static end-of-line calibration is 0.6° or less, and dynamic external compensation can reduce it to 0.1° or less.
Samples are available, and TDK plans to start production in the first half of 2027.
As EV platforms push from 400 V to 800 V and beyond 1,000 V, engineers are facing a growing gap between charging capability and what can be safely tested in real-world conditions.
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Komatsu-owned battery maker American Battery Solutions (ABS) has introduced Aventor, a high-voltage battery platform developed for high-utilization commercial, industrial and specialty applications.
Assembled in the US with domestically sourced cells, Aventor is designed to support OEM programs that comply with Build America, Buy America (BABA) requirements. Built on an 800 V architecture, Aventor stores 113 kWh and delivers 358 kW of peak discharge power. Energy density is 300 Wh/L, and specific energy is up to 200 Wh/kg.
A common architecture supports two form factors. The standard Chassis-Integrated Pack, which measures 2,090 x 634 x 285 mm, can be installed between the frame rails or in other constrained horizontal locations such as the roof. The Hyper-Rugged Cube Pack’s enclosure and load path are designed for harsher mechanical environments that see the highest levels of vibration, shock and utilization, and for multiple installation orientations.
The wire-free battery management system is designed to reduce system complexity and improve reliability. Voltage and temperature measurement at every series element, together with a microprocessor and onboard data storage at every cell group, provides granular monitoring and diagnostics. The system also includes cybersecurity protections, over-the-air update capability, active isolation monitoring, vent-gas detection and anti-propagation technology.
Aventor is designed to align with functional-safety, regulatory and certification requirements including ASIL-C under ISO 26262, FMVSS 305a, UL 2580 and ECE R100. It is built and validated for up to 10 years of heavy-duty design life. ABS says the standard enclosure is dust-tight and certified to IP67 for immersion and IP69K for high-pressure washdown.
Customer samples are planned for 2027, and production is planned to start in the first quarter of 2028. Initial production capacity will be 6,000 battery packs annually, or approximately 0.7 GWh.
“For high-utilization applications where charging time directly affects productivity, the platform supports fast charging from 10% to 80% in 42 minutes or less,” said Jeffrey Donaldson, SVP Engineering at ABS.
“We set out to develop a battery platform that leads on energy density without any compromises in the safety, durability or performance these applications demand,” said Subhash Dhar, founder and CEO of ABS.
MultiVent gives pack designers an alternative to combining dual-stage vents, separate evacuation valves and desiccants. Gore says every additional component adds validation requirements, sealing complexity and potential paths for moisture intrusion, which can lead to corrosion, sensor faults and warranty costs.
The vent builds on technology Gore acquired from Vernay Laboratories in 2026 and combines a Gore membrane with Vernay’s valve technology.
MultiVent mounts through a single opening in the pack wall and uses two valves and a Gore microporous membrane. In normal operation, one valve opens at defined pressures and, combined with the membrane, allows the pack to breathe while blocking water, dust and debris. Airflow is 1,200 L/h at 100 mbar, which Gore says is up to six times that of alternative venting options and reduces the number of vents a pack needs.
In Gore laboratory testing at 22° C and 50% relative humidity, moisture ingress measured less than 20 mg per day, which Gore says is under one-tenth that of many commercially available dual vents.
For thermal-runaway evacuation, the larger valve opens at 50 mbar, provides an evacuation flow of 50 L/s at 180 mbar and then reseals the housing. Gore says MultiVent performs consistently after standard automotive aging tests and can resist typical thermal-runaway temperatures.
“For years, battery pack designers have been forced to balance airflow, moisture control and safety using separate components,” said David Slupe, Gore’s Strategic Marketing Leader for Batteries. “We think those challenges are connected. GORE MultiVent gives engineers a way to address them together with a simpler architecture.”
Wireless charging is not just about convenience. For electric buses, it can enable operators to prolong battery life, to achieve the same range with a smaller battery pack, and to charge the same number of vehicles with fewer charging stations, as a Momentum Dynamics exec (among others) explained to Charged.
The electrification of bus fleets is advancing swiftly in Europe, particularly in Switzerland, where a startup called Winduction, a spin-off from the respected technical university ETH Zurich, is taking a novel approach to inductive charging.
“We believe that electric buses can be operated much more cheaply if they are charged wirelessly and regularly during operation,” says ETH graduate and Winduction CEO Laurin Schwitter.
Most inductive charging systems transfer electricity from a coil in the ground to a second coil on the vehicle’s undercarriage—but there’s one weakness in this approach. The distance between the road and the undercarriage is relatively large, and varies from one vehicle model to another. This distance is important, as the efficiency of energy transfer decreases with increasing separation.
The three founders of Winduction believe they’ve found a better way. “In any vehicle, the only thing that’s always in contact with the ground are the wheels,” says Winduction CTO Sylvain Fricker.
The company’s system includes a set of induction coils housed in a ground plate set into the road surface, as in a typical setup. The second group of coils, however, is integrated into a specially developed bus tire.
“We minimize the transmission distance between the road and undercarriage by placing coils inside the wheel,” says Fricker. “From the ground into the vehicle, the Winduction system achieves an efficiency of over 90 percent. As our technology is also effective during short charging stops, the buses can make do with smaller batteries, making them significantly cheaper to buy and operate.”
However, putting inductive coils into tires presented its own challenge—conventional bus tires contain steel belts, which would react with the magnetic field and convert a large part of the power into heat.
“For our system to function, we work with partners to develop a completely new steel-free tire,” says CEO Schwitter.
Winduction demonstrated its system on the bus line between Zurich Airport and the city’s Oerlikon quarter. “Our calculations show substantial savings compared with depot charging. How large they are depends on the route. A feasibility study with transport operators is currently quantifying this,” Schwitter explains.
Using Winduction’s system, operations on the route between Zurich Airport and Oerlikon should require charging plates only at 2 of 24 stops, at which the buses would charge for a total of 3 hours over the course of 16. For comparison, the electric buses used on this line currently charge simultaneously for 5 hours in the garage overnight, and need much more power to do so than they would with Winduction’s system.
Winduction is currently building real-world testing infrastructure in Winterthur, including a test lab and a test bus stop.
“In a subsequent stage of development, we want to bring all the components together in a form that’s geared towards the industry,” says Schwitter. “Our aim is to build a fully converted electric bus as quickly as possible that can also be used outside of our own private test area.”
The founders plan to carry out the first pilot in 2028. Discussions are currently underway with several Swiss transport operators.
