Oil is now flowing out of the Persian Gulf like before the Iran war. Why prices may still not come down anytime soon.

Oil flows out of the Persian Gulf in October nearly returned to levels seen before the start of the Iran war, but traders remain wary about a fragile recovery.

Total crude exports in the region, or flows coming out of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, recently recovered to within 10% of their previous levels in January and February, according to data compiled by TankerTrackers.com, a maritime intelligence firm tracking crude oil shipments (see chart below).

Iran exported around 1.5 million barrels of crude oil a day before the war, but that has fallen to zero since the U.S. reimposed its blockade in mid-July. Yet exports from Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, have jumped 10% above their prewar average.

So it’s fair to say that tanker traffic has almost completely normalized, which raises the question: Why this isn’t reflected in lower oil prices?” said Robin Brooks, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

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Oil prices have surged again in October, with both West Texas Intermediate CL00+2.01% CLZ26+2.01% and Brent crude BRN00-0.17% BRNZ26-0.17% up nearly 10% in the month to date. The Brent contract for December delivery ended nearly flat on Wednesday, at $108.82 a barrel, after hitting its highest level since May just last week, while WTI’s December contract was off 0.7%, to settle at $97.15, according to FactSet data.

Thursday morning, both WTI and Brent futures were rising more than 2%.

“Yes, we are starting to see recovery, but the issue is a large portion of those barrels have to take a more convoluted route,” said Ben McMillan, chief investment officer at IDX Advisors. “You have a lot of oil still going through over-the-ground pipelines, shuttle tankers and even dark-fleet tankers, so there’s still a premium in getting oil out of the Gulf, and there’s an elevated cost to do so because the shipping is not fully resumed,” he told MarketWatch Wednesday.

Indeed, the resumption of more robust oil flows hasn’t been enough to bring oil prices down significantly, as continued attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline have kept the cost of shipping crude elevated. President Donald Trump’s promise not to attack Iran before the midterm elections slightly tempered the rise in crude prices earlier this month, but fears that U.S. military operations could resume after Nov. 3 are still keeping geopolitical risks elevated.

If markets were saturated, that would not be a big problem, but with inventories so thin, even the loss of 5-10 million barrels a week will keep prices elevated,” he told MarketWatch.

U.S. commercial crude-oil inventories fell by 3.1 million barrels for the week ending Oct. 16, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This marked the third consecutive weekly decline, pushing total crude stocks to roughly 412.5 million barrels.

The Middle East can’t seem to go a day without another escalation. On Wednesday afternoon, Reuters reported that the State Department was planning to order the departure of some personnel from U.S. embassies in the Persian Gulf, including the evacuation of all embassy staff and their families from Saudi Arabia, citing U.S. government officials. AFP then reported that a diplomatic source said U.S. embassy staff and their families in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain have been ordered to leave.

Separately, a source at Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy said air defenses intercepted a drone that attempted to attack a facility at Saudi Aramco’s 2222-0.70% Shaybah field, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

Still, the recent uptick in oil flows could be just the beginning of the normalization. Michael Hsueh, commodities analyst at Deutsche Bank Research, said further normalization of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz would see the oil market swing into a large surplus, which could eventually bring oil prices down to $74 a barrel next year.

“A negotiated ceasefire leading to broader talks remains the path in our base case of Brent at $74 a barrel in 2027, while an extended war throughout 2027 would suggest Brent moving higher toward $130,” he said in a Wednesday client note. “In the meantime, restored crude-oil flows remain precarious and refinery crack spreads are likely to stay high.”

A crack spread is the difference between the price of one barrel of crude oil and the price of the refined products made from it, such as gasoline or diesel.

Isabel Wang

Isabel Wang is a Markets Reporter for MarketWatch.

Myra P. Saefong

Myra P. Saefong

Myra P. Saefong, assistant global markets editor, has covered the commodities sector for MarketWatch since 1998. She has been writing the Commodities Corner column since 2005.

Zelensky Says He Would Accept Deal to Freeze Ukraine War at Current Lines

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday he would accept a peace deal freezing the war along current front lines, calling it the “real way” to end the conflict.

Zelensky made the remarks in an interview on Fox News’s Fox & Friends when host Brian Kilmeade pressed him on whether he would agree to an arrangement that halted the fighting where the battlefield now stands.

The Ukrainian leader did not hesitate when asked to commit: “Yes, right now we have to freeze, and I think this is real way to end this war,” he replied. “We call it a ceasefire or ‘stop killing,’ like President Trump called it. Freeze and stop. And of course, this is the minimum what we need from Russia today.”

Kilmeade framed the question around a settlement under which Ukraine would retain 75 percent or more of its territory. Zelensky replied in the affirmative and said any freeze would need to be paired with Western backing.

Then, of course, we will go to [the U.S.] president and to Europeans, and we will ask for security guarantees,” he said.

The Ukrainian president cast the proposal as an opening into negotiations rather than a final territorial settlement, stressing that the priority is stopping the killing before talks on a durable peace.

The interview aired a day after Zelensky met U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in Oslo, Norway, alongside Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, and representatives from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, the European Union, and NATO. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner joined that meeting by video link.

Witkoff traveled directly from Oslo to St. Petersburg on Wednesday to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, carrying an updated framework proposal developed with Ukrainian and European input. Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev met Witkoff at the airport, two sources told Reuters.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his understanding was that the Oslo talks had been “positive,” with “nothing unexpected” or “surprising.”

Zelensky also said he was prepared to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries if Moscow took reciprocal steps, and renewed his call for a trilateral summit with Putin and Trump, a format the Kremlin has so far rejected.

Trump pressed both sides toward a settlement after months of stalled diplomacy, with his envoys shuttling between Kyiv’s European backers and Moscow to assemble a workable framework. Zelensky complained last week that the administration’s move to pause Russian sanctions would only embolden Putin.

Mariane Anderson, Breitbart

French weekend protests to be limited to union demos only, says Macron

Only authorised union protests will be allowed in French towns and cities on Saturday, President Emmanuel Macron has said, after demonstrations across the country turned violent last weekend.

Speaking as some cities including Lyon and Nice imposed complete bans, Macron said “illegitimate” protests would not be allowed but unions would be offered alternative routes so that businesses could be protected.

Big demonstrations against the high cost of living and school conditions were overshadowed last Saturday by riots and looting that saw business and historic buildings destroyed.

Interior Minister Jean-Didier Berger said police deployments would be increased by 20% compared to last weekend, after the government was accused of being blindsided by the scale of the unrest.

France’s justice minister said on Thursday that 217 people had been jailed over last weekend’s disorder after being convicted in fast-track trials, with that number expected to rise.

Gérald Darmanin said 2,700 people had been arrested across France and more than 1,000 have appeared in court.

Half of those detained had no prior criminal record, he said, according to Le Figaro newspaper.

Macron met intelligence services and ministers on Thursday, to prepare for the next national day of protests on Saturday.

Jamie Whitehead, BBC

Colorado school parents sound alarm after daughters were cut from volleyball team while trans athlete plays

Four families are demanding answers from Jeffco Public Schools after their daughters lost spots on the JV squad.

Four parents of Dakota Ridge High School athletes are demanding answers from Jeffco Public Schools in Colorado after they said a transgender player was allowed to participate on the girls’ junior varsity volleyball team while eight girls were cut from the roster.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights said Jeffco Public Schools had 10 days to voluntarily resolve alleged Title IX violations or face enforcement action.

Oct. 2, Department of Education Press Secretary Savannah Newhouse said, “Just this week, the Trump Administration restored the Title IX regulations that the Biden Administration unlawfully attempted to weaponize, making it undeniably clear that we will continue to enforce the law exactly as it was intended.”

Newhouse added, “Allowing male athletes to strip roster spots from women who have dedicated years of intense training to their sport is both an egregious moral failure and a definitive violation of the law. Unfortunately, because Jefferson County Public Schools remains intent on defying Title IX and has refused every opportunity to come into compliance, they face enforcement action from the Department of Justice. To the parents who have watched their daughters be relegated to second-class citizens on the court and stripped of their privacy in locker rooms, know this: the Trump Administration will not waver in pursuit of accountability.”

On Nov. 3, Colorado voters will vote on the ballot initiative, “Protect Women and Girls Sports Act,” which would require school athletic teams to be designated based on biological sex and prohibit male students from participating on teams designated for females, women or girls.

Rachel del Giudice, Fox News

Abdul El-Sayed and the Muslim Brotherhood: Past Statements, Family Ties, and Political Connections – SUMMARY

The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement that has influence9d political Islam across the Middle East and beyond. Its ideology and historical connections to various Islamist organizations have drawn scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers and national security officials. Critics of Abdul El-Sayed, a Michigan politician, have pointed to his past statements about the movement, his family’s reported connections to it, and his father-in-law’s affiliations with prominent Muslim American organizations. 

Genocidal Hamas = the Arab “Palestine” = Muslim Brotherhood

Hamas is inherently linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, sharing a foundational ideology aimed at the destruction of Western values and the establishment of an Islamic state.

  • Foundational Roots: Hamas was explicitly established in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin as the violent, militant arm of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. Conservative policy institutes emphasize that Hamas’s original 1988 charter openly declared the group to be a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.
  • Shared Islamist Ideology: Both entities operate under a radical Islamist framework that rejects Western democratic principles, capitalism, and modern secular governance, viewing global jihad as a necessity to implement strict Islamic law.
  • The 2017 Document: While Hamas issued a revised policy document in 2017 attempting to downplay its formal organizational ties to the broader Muslim Brotherhood, conservative security analysts widely dismiss this move as a deceptive public relations tactic. They argue that the strategic alignment, ideological goals, and financial networks between the two groups remain functionally unchanged

El-Sayed’s Past Statements on the Muslim Brotherhood

In an essay published by HuffPost in January 2011, El-Sayed argued that the Muslim Brotherhood’s potential rise to power following the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak might not be as troubling as some critics feared.

He contended that Egypt’s military would not support the group’s bid for power unless “strong liberal democratic structures were in place.” He also rejected comparisons suggesting that a Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt would resemble Hamas’s rule in Gaza.

Following the rise to power of Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, El-Sayed signed a statement in 2012 urging Morsi “to purge the media and police as quickly as possible.”

“We affirm, as Egyptian Americans, that we strongly reject those voices that are courting America and Europe to take a position against the Egyptian regime,” the statement’s signatories declared.

These statements prove El-Sayed underestimated the risks posed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s political agenda and its approach to democratic institutions.

Family Connections to the Muslim Brotherhood

Questions have also been raised about El-Sayed’s family history. His half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, discussed the family’s historical ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, commonly abbreviated as “MB.” She also indicated that some relatives had been imprisoned in Egypt because of their activism in the organization.

In a 2012 social media post, Abdelhadi described having an “amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college.”

These accounts have added another dimension to scrutiny of El-Sayed’s background. 

His Father-in-Law and Connections to Muslim American Organizations

Further questions have centered on El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, and his reported leadership roles in prominent Muslim American organizations.

According to reporting by the Washington Free Beacon and the Washington Examiner, Jukaku served as president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) from 2005 to 2010 and served on the founding committee of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

Both CAIR and ISNA were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the federal Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case. In 2008, five Holy Land Foundation leaders were convicted of providing material support to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. Prosecutors presented evidence concerning what they described as a Muslim Brotherhood-linked network in the United States.

The Washington Free Beacon also reported that Jukaku contributed $200,000 to a super PAC supporting El-Sayed’s Senate campaign. That reported contribution has raised questions among critics about the political networks and financial support surrounding El-Sayed’s campaign.

Why These Connections Matter

Taken together, El-Sayed’s past statements about the Muslim Brotherhood, his family’s reported history with the movement, and his father-in-law’s organizational and political connections provide context for examining his views on political Islam, his loyalties and the networks surrounding his political career.

Comma.point

Kamala Just Revealed That She’s Running for President in 2028

Matt Margolis

Kamala Harris insists she hasn’t decided whether she’s running for president in 2028, but she accidentally gave the game away.

Obviously, nobody in the Democrat Party is exactly begging her to jump in. The establishment has been pushing back hard on the idea of a third Kamala campaign. Former allies and donors grumble that she squandered her first year out of office, and they can’t come up with a single reason voters should take another look at her. Even her husband, Doug Emhoff, reportedly isn’t thrilled about her running again.

You’d think all that would give her pause. Instead, Kamala keeps dropping hints, and her latest one came at an event in Las Vegas, where she debuted a slower, lower-pitched speaking style. It’s the newest entry in her long record of changing her voice and speech cadence depending on who’s sitting in the audience.

“That era of feeling powerless — like what can we do, this just keeps happening — that era is over because we are now 13 days away from doing something about it to stop the pain,” Kamala said, speaking slowly and in a lower register, as if to a room of sleepy kindergarteners.

She kept up the same condescending tone while urging Nevada voters to back Democrats in the state’s governor’s race and for Congress.

“So that’s where we are right now, and that’s kind of exciting,” she continued. “Right? This is some good stuff. Like, we’re taking our power, we’re using it, to determine who will hold offices like being the governor of Nevada. Which is so important for the people everyday on the most basic issues that affect our lives. Who will continue to walk those halls of Congress, being an extraordinary fighter.”

This new tone she’s adopting fits how Democrats see voters: as children they need to control. You don’t talk to grown adults that way unless you think they need a nap and a juice box before they can handle a ballot.

Let’s be fair: Kamala didn’t invent the fake accent. Hillary Clinton infamously slipped into a Southern drawl while campaigning in the South during the 2008 presidential primaries. Barack Obama was known for adjusting his dialect for different crowds during that same campaign. And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been pulling the same trick for years.

It’s phony and desperate, every single time.

ICYMI: Ilhan Omar’s Answer on Marrying Her Brother Was Just Painfully Bad

The motive here isn’t complicated. Politicians who put on fake accents want voters to feel they share something with them. When a Democrat suddenly picks up a Southern drawl, leans into black vernacular, or shifts her cadence to match the crowd, it’s not random or subconscious; it’s a calculated move. The candidate is trying to manufacture cultural familiarity, hoping voters will see her as one of their own. It’s just shameless pandering from a candidate who wants to convey “I’m just like you” without saying the words.

And Kamala wouldn’t bother with any of this if she weren’t planning to run for president.

Nobody road-tests a new voice for a midterm rally out of civic duty. You do it because you’re auditioning for something bigger. So she can keep saying she hasn’t made up her mind. Kamala just told us she’s running for president.

Matt Margolis, PJ Media

Is it time for another worldwide civilizational collapse?

It has happened before in history. Those who think it can’t happen again are out of their minds.

In 1200 B.C., worldwide civilization fell into ruin.  That is only partially an overstatement.  The Americas and Asia were on a separate path, but the Mediterranean complex of civilizations, the “known world,” was all but destroyed.  It was laying the foundation of Western Civilization, which is the modern worldwide standard for science, technology, human rights, and self-government — and critically, an enduring monotheistic society.

The Bronze Age collapse took about a century, but that is sudden in terms of history.  Before 1300 B.C. there was a network of prosperous, stable kingdoms.  Then, shortly thereafter, everything went wrong at once.  Volcanoes and invasions were the headline causes, but numerous other factors came into play.  The result was the destruction of mighty empires.  Thriving cities fell into ruin.  Trade routes were cut.  Barbarians massacred entire populations.

Recovery took centuries, but here we are, enjoying yet another golden age of worldwide prosperity.  Yes, there are dark spots and open sores in the picture, but day to day, most people awaken to indoor plumbing and controlled temperatures.  They enjoy breakfast, and they thrive within family, career, and comfort. 

It could all come crashing down in a lifetime or less. 

In the 1980s, cultural revolutionaries chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western civ has got to go.”  If no one took them seriously at the time, we do now, because they are getting their wish.

Witness Europe.  The aforementioned modern worldwide standard for science, etc. is being eroded.  Invaders who once were repelled at the walls have now been invited in through the gates, and given food, shelter, medical care, and freedom.  In return, they plunder, rape, and murder their benefactors.  The revolution continues.

All of this was not only eminently predictable, but actually predicted.  Hungary and Poland sounded the warning loud and clear, as did classic liberals throughout Europe and the anglosphere.  Today, those two nations are the safest and most stable countries in Europe, yet they are excoriated by the others for practicing the very policies that make them the shining examples of what the continent could be.  The lepers are screaming at the healthy, “Be like us.”

Is a reversal of the currently unfolding self-destruction possible?  Yes, but the bandage must be painfully ripped off.  Mass deportation, previously unthinkable to the leftist mind, is now being seriously discussed as a necessity.  Painful solutions, however, are not something ignorant populations accept, or even understand.

As our Founders understood, evils will be suffered while they are sufferable, but eventually, they become neither tolerable nor tolerated.  What happens when the evils are so deeply embedded that removing them is not merely painful, but destructive of the institutions of power?

In the 1940s, European civilization was on the brink of final collapse.  The economies of Italy and Germany had become so distressed that brutal dictatorships were installed as a solution, bringing ever more ruin.  Will history repeat itself?

There is hope.  Bronze was never the best metal; iron is better, but iron is more difficult to forge than the copper-tin alloy of bronze.  Only when the supplies of tin were cut off were the metalsmiths forced to resort to the more abundant, and stronger, elemental iron.  It had been there all along, available the whole time.  (Does this give greater meaning to the word irony?)

By analogy, multiculturalism is the weak alloy of various, incompatible cultures.  The values of Western civilization are the iron — difficult to practice but superior values to which we must return.  Europe can survive, but it will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming (and worse) the whole way.

Viva Hungary.  Viva Poland.

American Thinker

Socialism Isn’t Just Deadly—It’s Soul-Crushing

Liana Graham | Ashley Reese

Far-left political influencer Hasan Piker was recently grilled on a satirical internet show—and the clips it generated were gold.

“Now, Karl Marx said, ‘To each according to his needs.’ You live in a $2.7 million house,” the host said. “Why are your needs more important than 90% of other Californians?”

Piker appeared uncomfortable as he answered—and it wasn’t because he was fully decked out in a Mao suit. 

To put it simply, proudly sporting the uniform of a regime that took the lives of an estimated 80 million people, all while enjoying the prosperity of a $2.7 million house and invitations to Oscar parties, isn’t a good look.

But of the socialist states Piker views favorably, former Yugoslavia arguably ranks among the highest. He once published a video titled “Yugoslavia Was Awesome!” in which he praised aspects of the former socialist country, including its living standards.

That idea might seem laughable to survivors like Slavenka Drakulic—literally.

In 1992, she published her book “How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed,” which recounts the stories of daily life under communism in Eastern Europe. While Piker may shrug off the textbook figures on communism’s death tolls, he may be less familiar with one of its nearly invisible effects: the subtle erosion of human dignity, hope, and personal responsibility.

Drakulic’s book brings a magnifying glass to these stories, starting with an account of the life of her friend Tanja. After the death of her lover and the destruction of her journalistic reputation for mildly criticizing nationalization, Tanja committed suicide.


For those under socialist rule, a lack of faith in the future was a characteristic feature of life. Everyone around Drakulic seemed to assume the permanence of the communist state.

“What communism instilled in us was precisely this immobility,” she wrote. “The absence of a future, the absence of a dream, of the possibility of imagining our lives differently.”

For Tanja, that loss of hope proved fatal.

Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote about a similar effect in his well-known book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

Drawing from his experience in a concentration camp, Frankl concluded that the individuals who were able to persevere held on to a crucial ingredient for life: hope. Even in barbaric conditions, hope allowed prisoners to maintain their dignity and will to live.

Ordinary lives—not just political dissidents—were crushed under the weight of socialist regimes.

“Not big heroes, political prisoners, or dissidents,” Drakulic wrote, “but people who just could not stand it anymore.”

In a society with concentrated state power, citizens increasingly lose the sense that they have a stake in molding the future—and that has a devastating effect not only on hope, but also on individual responsibility.

Litter was therefore pervasive. Drakulic wrote that citizens, having lost a sense of their agency, behaved as if “the public belonged to nobody.”

She continued, “If you can’t destroy the system, you can certainly destroy a telephone booth, ticket machine, or flowers in a park. In this silent war, the losers are our cities

Frustration with the system found expression in small acts of neglect. The physical decay of the urban landscape is a mirror image of a population hollowed out from within.

Communism is economically unsustainable—that much is gleaned from the failure of the USSR and its satellite states. But even deeper is its spiritual cost. Forcing humans to live in impoverished conditions, fearful of the all-seeing eye of the state, degrades trust, freedom, and creativity; it degrades the human soul. We must heed Drakulic’s warning of the spiritual rather than merely economic cost of collectivism.

As she stated in the 1990s, “We may have survived communism, but we have not outlived it.” That is because communism is so much more than an economic ideology—it seeps into the very mind and soul of individuals forced to live under its reign.

Daily Signal

Thoughts on Where the Democrats Will Take Us

Everyone’s excited about Medicare for All. No more premiums. No more medical costs. No more worrying about health insurance. The government covers everything. Unfortunately, the Medicare program for seniors is going bankrupt, as is Social Security. In the next decade, it will collapse by the government’s own figures. So how is Medicare for All going to step in and cover everything and everyone? Taxes can’t go high enough. Democrats want to tax “the rich” as high as 90 percent. But even that won’t cover the cost of Medicare. The only possible solution? Rationing. Plus mandated euthanasia. There’s no other way. People voting for socialism (right now, in early voting) think they suffer so much under capitalism. But how will they cope with the medical equivalent of empty grocery store shelves? Oh, and empty store shelves are coming too. Perhaps when hunger and famine become part of American life, health care won’t matter as much.

But hey — we will have AFFORDABILITY under socialism. That’s all that matters.

*******

We use DNA as the final word in convicting violent criminals. DNA is so trusted that we will send a convicted criminal to Death Row based on it. Yet when it comes to men who decide they’re women, or women who decide they’re men, we no longer consider the DNA evidence. Gender is whatever you say it is, or feel it is, in a given moment. If your DNA proves you’re a man, but you claim you’re a woman — why then, you’re a woman. So much for “trust the science.”

*******

“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.”
― Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Honda’s wireless EV charger means no plugs and you won’t even need to stop!

Rapid charging speeds are getting faster all the time. There are already a few cars capable of 400kW, while BYD’s Flash Charging tech supplies a whopping 1,500kW. But even the latter system involves stopping, plugging in and waiting for about 10 minutes. Honda, meanwhile, is envisioning a future in which you won’t have to stop at all.

The Japanese manufacturer is working with The Taisei Corporation and its Taisei Rotec subsidiary on wireless, road surface-integrated charging technology that’s capable of keeping an electric car topped up as it drives along. This isn’t a new idea, but the Honda project stands out firstly because of the potential output of up to 150kW, intended to charge up the especially large batteries of electric commercial vehicles on the go.

Another notable aspect is a planned test on a public road from April 2027 onwards. The Tateyama Expressway in Chiba, Japan is the chosen site, although the assessment will be preceded by testing at the Taisei Group’s Future Technology Field in Fukushima Prefecture starting later this year.

Each of the three companies will provide one key piece of the puzzle. It’s Honda’s job to sort the power receiver and transmitter units, while Taisei is developing the DC power supply system, and Taisei Rotec will work on the technology necessary for sticking all of this into the asphalt.

Matt Robinson, AutoExpressUK