Car companies have discovered quite a few ways to improve EV range over the years. There's the efficiency route, which produces a 500-mile EV like the Lucid Air. There's aerodynamics and, of course, stuffing a big ol' battery into something like the Chevy Silverado EV.
Some automakers are looking outside the vehicle too. This week, Honda announced that it has developed wireless-charging technology and that it aims to start testing it on public roads next year. We're not just talking about any wireless charging—Tesla and Porsche have that covered.
This is wireless charging that powers up a car while it's in motion. Hardware embedded in the road will wirelessly beam up to 150 kilowatts of power to vehicles traveling at 75 mph. Honda's R&D subsidiary developed the technology alongside a Japanese company called Taisei.
Before you get your hopes up, this isn't a massive rollout. Honda calls the first stage "demonstration testing." The manufacturer has targeted a small stretch of highway in the Chiba prefecture outside of Tokyo spanning just over an eighth of a mile (300 meters) where it will work to install the necessary infrastructure and deploy it commercially.
This particular test is aimed at validating the initial tech for use in commercial vehicles. Think large trucks or big people movers that do a lot of commuting and require continuous uptime. But on the flip side, if there's viability in big trucks, there's certainly the possibility that the tech could eventually make its way into passenger cars as well.
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