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Honda’s road-charging trials: what they will and won’t tell us

Honda test electric car charging roadsCharging on the move might be on the way......

Honda and its partners want to deliver electricity through the road to moving vehicles. The first trial on a Japanese motorway is planned for the 2027 financial year, which begins in April 2027. Until those trials report, nobody can use the system.

How the road sends power to a car

The system uses transmitter units set into the road surface. A receiver fitted under the vehicle picks up the energy through a magnetic field, so there is no cable and no physical contact.

Each road unit combines an inverter and a coil in one assembly. Honda says this is a world first. The units connect to each other through a DC line, which means less wiring to bury. Each unit converts DC to AC internally.

Honda says this should make installation easier. It has not yet published costs, so that claim remains untested.

The road transmits power only when a compatible vehicle is over it. 

Who does what

Three companies, three jobs. Honda's research unit develops the road units and the vehicle receiver. Taisei Corporation builds the DC power supply. Taisei Rotec works out how to fit the system into the road.

The partners have been working together since 2025. Honda has researched wireless power for moving vehicles since 2021.

What the 150kW figure means

Honda says the system can deliver up to 150kW, but it describes this as a target that later testing will verify.

So what may that mean in terms of energy?

At 100km/h, a car covers 100 metres in 3.6 seconds. Running at the full 150kW over that stretch would deliver about 0.15kWh, or roughly 1.5kWh per kilometre.

These are our figures, not Honda's, and they ignore transfer losses. They show that route length and coverage matter at least as much as the peak rating.

What the tests will check

Honda's testing is staged. It has already carried out experiments at Taisei's Satte site in Saitama. A test road at Taisei's Tamura site in Fukushima Prefecture is planned from late 2026. Those tests will cover:

  • Road durability, using real vehicles run over the equivalent of one million wheel loads
  • Power transfer while the vehicle is moving
  • Controlling electromagnetic leakage
  • Later, high-power operation up to 150kW and reliability at higher speeds

The public-road trial is the next step. NEXCO East, the motorway operator, plans to install about 300 metres of the Tateyama Expressway mainline near the Kimitsu parking area in Chiba. The trial will run several times from FY2027. A second team of Toyota, Denso and Obayashi is also involved. NEXCO East describes it as the first trial of its kind on a Japanese motorway mainline.

What it means for drivers and fleets

Nothing can be bought or used yet. A car needs receiving equipment, and the road only powers compatible vehicles. Honda says its receivers are designed to suit everything from passenger cars to large commercial vehicles. It also says that if other manufacturers follow the same international standards, their cars could draw power from these roads too. Honda names logistics and trucking as its first market.

Fleet operators face the real question. Would a few hundred metres of charging road on a busy route save enough stops or batteries to pay for the roadworks? The announcements give no costs, and the trials are meant to answer the technical questions first.

How this project progresses may depend on three things: results from the Tamura road, whether the Chiba trial starts in FY2027, and any published installation cost per kilometre.

Sources and further reading