Kawasaki Heavy's battery-powered tram

Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) announced late last week that they're developing a tram (or a Light Rail Vehicle, in their terms) powered by nickel-metal hydride batteries, and that they've already succeeded in getting a test unit to run for 10km on a single charge.

The SWIMO, to get its misleadingly amphibious-sounding monicker out of the way, is apparently named for the fact that it is a MOver that WIns the ability to Smoothly run in areas with no electrical power and lets you get on and off equally Smoothly. (Apologies for the reverse order, but it would've gotten even more complex had we tried to reproduce the Japanese syntax). Someone fire the KHI acronym department already.

The 10km test appears to have been run with a 1950s-desgined two-carriage train provided by minuscule Kyushu-based Chikaho Electric Railroad, so once the SWIMO prototype (which presumably will be a lot lighter) appears in 2007 KHI expects the range to go up quite a bit. Japan could certainly use a few less cars, and our completely arbitrary opinion is that trams are cooler than buses. Obviously, though, what we really want is the space-age version rather than the dowdy artist's impression shown here.

[Via Slashdot Japan (Japanese)]