Honda to Wirelessly Charge EVs While Driving — 5ch: ‘Sounds Like Crazy EMF, Better Stock Up on Tin Foil’

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The story

Honda R&D and Taisei Corporation announced that they have jointly developed a system to wirelessly charge electric vehicles (EVs) from the road while they are in motion. Transmission devices embedded in the road surface send power to EVs fitted with receiving devices as they drive over them, and the companies plan to begin field trials on expressways from fiscal year 2027 onward. The goal is to help overcome the short driving range and lack of charging infrastructure that have been holding back EV adoption, but on 5ch threads, commenters raised concerns one after another about low transmission efficiency, the cost of road construction, and the extra power generation that would be required. At the same time, there were plenty of joking comments comparing it to overhead-wire systems or trolleybuses, and poking fun at fears of electromagnetic radiation, with opinions split over just how realistic the technology actually is.

On the 5th, Honda announced it had jointly developed a system with Taisei Corporation to charge electric vehicles (EVs) while they’re driving. By wirelessly supplying power from transmission devices embedded in the road, the system aims to make long-distance driving viable. Field trials on expressways will begin from fiscal year 2027 onward.

Driving-range limitations and the buildout of charging equipment remain key obstacles to EV adoption. Wirelessly charging EVs as they drive is meant to reduce how often drivers need to stop at charging points, improving convenience.

Honda R&D, Honda’s research and development subsidiary, developed the receiving device fitted to the EV and the transmission device embedded in the road. Taisei Corporation developed the road design and power-supply system, while its subsidiary Taisei Rotec is handling the road construction method.

Source: jiji.com / Read the original article here

What people said

3AnonymousOct 5, 2026 19:52
Still banging on about EVs? Is Honda gonna be okay…
26AnonymousOct 5, 2026 19:59
They're going to need more nuclear plants to cover all that extra power, aren't they.
161AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:57
Re: #26
Yeah, they'd need like 20 more reactors running.
30AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:01
Feels like a ton of that electricity's just going to be wasted.
45AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:06
Re: #30
Same, that's what I thought too.
39AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:04
Sounds like some serious electromagnetic radiation…
Better stock up on tin foil while I can.
46AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:07
Re: #39
Apparently PCs and smartphones are dangerous too, so they say.
48AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:08
Here's an idea — what about putting up overhead wires and feeding power from those?
Pretty nice idea, right?
102AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:27
Re: #48
So… a trolleybus, basically?
50AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:08
Quit messing around with pointless stuff and just make a high-capacity battery that doesn't degrade already.
56AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:11
Re: #50
Seriously, exactly lol
How much is building all this infrastructure even going to cost?
54AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:10
Electricity is just energy-inefficient.
The range meter drops in no time on hills.
Performance is also unstable since it's affected by temperature.
It's hopeless.
80AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:19
Re: #54
If there's an uphill, there's a downhill somewhere too lol
84AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:22
Yeah, this is exactly the future everyone's been dreaming of.
Alright, let's bury this stuff under roads all across the country!
88AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:24
Re: #84
Something feels off about this.
There's gotta be a smarter way to do it.
107AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:30
With an internal combustion engine, torque (the force that moves the car) only builds up once the engine's RPM rises. But because of how the motors used in EVs work, maximum torque comes on instantly right from a standstill.
The flip side is excellent acceleration, but there are plenty of downsides too — fuel/energy efficiency, controllability on slippery roads, tire wear, and so on.
On uphills, this torque characteristic backfires: the motor has to haul the car's weight up the slope, so power consumption spikes all at once.
113AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:33
Re: #107
That's basically just the reason some Prius out there turns into a 'missile' (runaway acceleration incidents).
111AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:33
Let's put electrodes on the stop lines so cars can charge while waiting at a red light.
119AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:36
Re: #111
This is a country too broke to even repaint the crosswalk lines — no way they're pulling that off.
112AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:33
Smartphone batteries degrade a ton if you use the phone while it's charging — I wonder if that's going to be a problem here too?
120AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:36
Re: #112
On recent phones, while charging, the charger powers both the battery charging and the device itself — the device isn't actually running off the battery during that time.
115AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:35
Physically speaking, wireless power transmission is still only barely at the stage of beaming high energy focused into a narrow area — like the Satellite Cannon or the Impulse Gundam in Gundam (anime superweapons that fire concentrated energy beams).

If you want to pull off something like 'you get charged just by driving through this bypass section,' that's basically the Cyclops system (another Gundam superweapon, but one that blasts a wide area).
124AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:38
Re: #115
So what you'd need is some kind of medium that can contain and carry a high-output discharge while charging on the move.
139AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:45
Transmission efficiency is going to be terrible, so the load on power plants will be huge.
That means electricity bills go up, and they'll end up building nuclear plants like crazy.

Is Honda secretly an anti-Japan company or something?
143AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:47
Re: #139
Maybe ever since Honda got a new president, it turned into an Apple-poisoned-apple type of company?
179AnonymousOct 5, 2026 21:08
Re: #139
There are actually devices out there that use only about 30 watts of power but can output 6,000 volts at 200 amps.
142AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:46
Apparently if 'quantum batteries' ever become real, the theory is that the bigger the capacity, the faster they charge — and even small ones would charge in way under a second, basically instantly, with incredibly high safety and durability to boot.
If that actually happens, it'd top even solid-state batteries — gas cars would be wiped out completely, and smartphones would barely degrade at all, so you could just buy one great high-performance phone outright for around 300,000 yen and use it for years — the cost-to-performance would be insane.
146AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:49
Re: #142
Humanity could probably live for free, completely, but the powers-that-be with their vested interests just enjoy creating a gap between rich and poor to feed their lust for control.
148AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:50
Re: #146
Like, a few dozen people own most of the world's wealth or something, right? lol
156AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:55
Re: #146
Same with pharmaceuticals — there's probably a sales strategy that deliberately works to increase the number of patients first.
157AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:55
Ah, wireless charging, huh…

No way that's happening — they're re-paving the asphalt year-round as it is.
162AnonymousOct 5, 2026 20:57
Re: #157
Well, they could probably manage it by just using concrete at the spots with the charging equipment…
Same logic as why tunnel floors use concrete instead of asphalt.
168AnonymousOct 5, 2026 21:00
Not many people know how things actually went for Honda after they went all-in on EVs.
So let's talk about it.

Honda named the EV it sells in China "Ye" (燁) — and that drew backlash, with people saying "Fire under a flower? You trying to burn China down?" (the character combines "brilliant/splendor" with "fire," which read as an inauspicious pun to Chinese buyers).
On top of that, the EV had pointlessly great cornering performance that nobody driving mountain roads actually needed, got crushed by Chinese EVs on driver-assist and IT features, and cost over 1 million yen more.
It bombed, spectacularly.
187AnonymousOct 5, 2026 21:13
Re: #168
No sense of judgment in anything they do.
No wonder they're talking about charging cars while they're driving lol
184AnonymousOct 5, 2026 21:10
Forget all this, just hurry up and make a Japan-made battery already lmao

Background and Key Points of This Topic

This technology is called “dynamic wireless power transfer” — a method that supplies power to EVs from the road while they’re actually driving, without stopping, unlike conventional charging-stand setups. The announcement only confirms that Honda and Taisei Corporation jointly developed the system and plan to begin field trials on expressways from fiscal year 2027 onward; it does not mean transmission devices have been decided for installation on roads nationwide. The thread’s disagreement centered mainly on estimates of transmission efficiency and cost — some pointed out that wireless power transfer tends to lose more energy due to distance and positioning gaps, and that securing enough electricity would require building more nuclear plants, while others compared it to overhead-wire systems and trolleybuses and said “there’s nothing new here.” Honda’s EV “Ye” has reportedly struggled in the Chinese market, and this history of distrust toward Honda’s EV strategy itself appears to be part of the backdrop to the reaction.

*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “Honda to Charge EVs While Driving — Developed with Taisei Corporation, Field Trials Targeted for FY2027.”

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