ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,365,254, issued on July 22, was assigned to Hitachi Industrial Products Ltd. (Tokyo).

"Electric vehicle and electric vehicle system" was invented by Hiroaki Miyata (Tokyo), Naoshi Sugawara (Tokyo), Junichi Yanagita (Tokyo) and Kazuhiro Imaie (Tokyo).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present invention prevents a failure from occurring in an electric vehicle. This electric vehicle is driven by power obtained from a power line via a collector, an energy source mounted on the electric vehicle, or using both thereof, and causes power generated, for example, during braking to be regenerated to the power line via the collector or to be consumed...