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This paper reports the results achieved through the development of a prototype of electric wheelchair having direct-drive motors being housed within the wheel rims and designed to achieve performance as required for such a particular 24 V battery-operated vehicle application. The main levels of innovation of the realized prototype are described: the design and construction of two twin AFPM wheel-motor drives; the design and modeling of controllers together with the regulators tuning; the design and realization of the power conversion section; the development of a back- EMF-based method in conjunction with Hall-effect sensors to estimate rotor speed and position. Then, EMC characterization of the electric wheelchair is presented.