Honda will test wireless EV charging on 300 metres of motorway in 2027

Honda will test wireless charging built into a 300-metre stretch of Japanese motorway from next year, delivering up to 150 kW to vehicles moving at 120 km/h, aimed first at commercial vehicles. France, Germany and Sweden have been running or planning electric roads since 2022, and the French A10 project already delivers more than 200 kW to a truck, a bus and a car simultaneously.

Honda will beam 150 kW into moving vehicles on 300 metres of Japanese motorway from next year. France is already doing it at more than 200 kW on the A10. The hard part was never the technology.

Honda’s research arm developed the system with the construction firm Taisei and will install it on a stretch of road in Chiba prefecture outside Tokyo, as InsideEVs reported. It delivers up to 150 kW to vehicles travelling at 120 km/h. The first test is aimed at commercial vehicles.

Taku Ueda, Honda’s chief engineer of research and development, told Nikkei Asia the technology could cut the number of battery cells in future electric cars, and could ease what he called the Japanese public’s charging anxiety.

That is the real argument.

A smaller battery means a cheaper, lighter car, and weight is what drives both range loss and road wear. Charging while moving means the battery no longer has to carry the whole journey. Honda says the system works in passenger cars as well as trucks.

Europe has been testing this for years.

Electreon and EnBW laid a one-kilometre electric road under a public bus route near Balingen in Germany from 2022, in phases, starting with 400 metres.

France went further.

Vinci Autoroutes, Vinci Construction and Gustave Eiffel University are running a wireless charging stretch on the A10 south-west of Paris that delivers more than 200 kW and charges a truck, a bus and a car at the same time. France is targeting 5,000 km of electric road by 2030 and 9,000 km by 2035.

Honda is testing 300 metres.

The case for electrifying the road is strongest for freight, and in Europe that has a number attached. The average logistics depot needs ten to twenty times its current power capacity to run an electric fleet, and grid connections take years. Decade Energy raised EUR 22M in April to finance that upgrade for depot operators.

An electric road moves the problem off the depot.

Sweden announced a 21 km permanent electric road on the E20 in 2023, intended to open to the public by 2026. Nobody has said what became of it.