For modern electric vehicles (EVs) and aircraft, a high-power quality and efficient power conversion system is crucial. This study proposed a novel reduced-switch 31-level cascaded H-bridge (CHB) multilevel inverter (MLI) for aircraft and EV power system applications. The proposed inverter reduced the number of switches by 68.33 %, and minimized the gate drivers compared to the conventional CHB 31-level MLI. As a result, the proposed topology reduced the switching losses and the voltage stress on the semiconductor devices. The inverter generates an excellent rated output voltage of 115Vrms at 400 Hz frequency, while the calculated total harmonic distortion (THD) of 3.01 %, which is below the requirement of the EV and aircraft standard. To ensure the system robustness, inverter harmonic performance, and voltage regulation, an extensive performance assessment was carried out under dynamic load conditions, which range from (1 kW to 10 kW). MATLAB/Simulink was used for simulation, which confirms that the proposed inverter has stable operation, near-sinusoidal output voltage, and improved efficiency under load variation.