Honda Wireless Charging HeroNext year, Honda will begin testing out a wireless charger baked into a stretch of highway near Tokyo.Honda will begin testing wireless charging on a Japanese highway next year.It envisions commercial use at first and sees it as a path to cheaper, lighter EVs with smaller batteries.The path to real-world viability is bigger than just one car company.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.Honda Wireless Charging InlineBefore 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. Honda notes that the tech works in both passenger cars and big trucks.Honda's chief engineer of R&D, Taku Ueda, told Nikkei Asia that this type of charging could even reduce the number of battery cells installed in future EVs. That's a huge deal because not only are batteries a major contributor to the cost of new electric cars, but the weight also plays into range inefficiencies and road wear. So while the total range might be reduced on paper, sipping on electrons while in motion could actually translate into traveling just as far thanks to wireless charging. He also said the technology could relieve some of the Japanese public's charging anxiety.Honda isn't the first automaker to research this type of charging. Other companies and governments have tried this before with varying levels of success over the years. Electreon is the big player, and it installed a short stretch of wireless-charging road in Detroit.Some companies are looking to charge EVs at lightning speed while others swap batteries. Meanwhile, Honda apparently sees a future where wireless charging and more efficient cars roam the roads. Maybe the answer is all three.More Battery and Charging NewsChina Wants Mass-Produced Solid-State Batteries By 2030. CATL Knows That's HardHow Geely's New Battery Handles A Megawatt Of Charging Power Without Crazy DegradationThe 2027 Cadillac Escalade IQ Gets A NACS Port And Faster Home ChargingThe BMW i3's 468-Mile Range Demolishes Every Tesla