Trends of Wireless Power Transfer Systems for Roadway Powered Electric Vehicles

Roadway powered electric vehicles (RPEV) are attractive candidates for future transportations because they are free from large and heavy batteries but directly get power efficiently while moving along a road. The inductive power transfer systems (IPTS) that have been widely used for the wireless powering of RPEV are reviewed in this paper. Main milestones of the developments of the IPTS and RPEV are summarized in this paper, mainly about the recent developments of on-line electric vehicles (OLEV) that have been commercialized first in 2013.