Honda Is Testing Roads That Can Charge Moving EVs. What It Could Mean for Nigeria

Imagine an electric truck that does not have to stop to recharge.

Instead, the road beneath it supplies electricity while it moves.

That is the technology Honda is now developing with Japanese construction companies Taisei and Taisei Rotec.

Honda says the system can wirelessly transfer power from equipment embedded in a road to an electric vehicle travelling above it. The companies are preparing for public-road demonstrations in Japan from the 2027 fiscal year.

The technology is aimed initially at logistics and commercial transport, where stopping large electric vehicles for charging can be particularly disruptive.

It sounds futuristic.

But the more immediate business question for Nigeria is much more basic: how much charging infrastructure does the country need before technologies like this become relevant?

Honda is trying to remove the charging stop

Honda’s system is known as dynamic wireless power transfer.

Instead of plugging an EV into a charger while it is parked, charging equipment embedded in the road transfers electricity to a receiver fitted to the vehicle while it is moving.

The companies say they have developed road equipment capable of withstanding traffic from commercial vehicles weighing around 20 tonnes.

They are planning further testing at power levels of up to 150 kilowatts for potential large commercial vehicles, including tests at higher speeds and assessments of reliability, safety and electromagnetic-field leakage.

The technology could eventually address one of the biggest problems in commercial EVs: time.

A delivery truck that spends less time parked at a charging station can spend more time carrying goods.

For operators, that turns charging from a purely energy problem into a fleet-utilisation problem.

That is why Honda is focusing initially on logistics and transportation.

The technology is not yet a commercial road network. Honda and its partners are still testing the underlying system and preparing for public-road demonstrations.

But the direction is clear.

The charging infrastructure itself could eventually become part of the road.

Nigeria is dealing with a different EV problem

Nigeria’s electric-vehicle market is growing, but the country is still at a much earlier stage of the infrastructure build-out.

Reuters reported in August that almost 4,000 electric vehicles had been approved in Nigeria during the first half of 2026.

Yet the country had only about 48 public charging stations by late 2025.

That mismatch tells us something important about the Nigerian market.

The question is no longer simply whether Nigerians will buy electric vehicles.

It is whether the infrastructure around those vehicles can expand quickly enough to make them practical at scale.

Charging stations are one part of that equation.

Electricity supply is another.

Nigeria’s power system remains far below the level of reliability and capacity needed to support a mass transition of transport energy from petrol and diesel to electricity.

An EV does not eliminate the energy problem.

It changes where the energy comes from and what infrastructure is required to deliver it.

The government is betting on EVs anyway

Nigeria’s government has already made electric mobility part of its broader transport-energy strategy.

In March 2026, President Bola Tinubu approved the expansion of the Presidential Initiative on Compressed Natural Gas to include electric vehicles.

The renamed Pi-CNG & EV initiative was given responsibility for coordinating EV deployment, charging infrastructure and related investments.

The government has also been providing policy support for EV adoption and local assembly.

That creates an emerging market for charging businesses, fleet operators, energy companies, vehicle manufacturers and infrastructure developers.

But it also raises the question of what kind of infrastructure Nigeria should build.

Should the country concentrate on conventional charging stations?

Should commercial fleets use battery swapping?

Should charging hubs be connected to solar and storage?

And eventually, could selected roads themselves become part of the charging network?

Honda’s experiment puts that last question on the table.

Dynamic charging is not a shortcut around electricity

There is an important misconception to avoid.

Wireless charging roads do not create electricity.

They distribute electricity.

The road needs a power supply. The embedded equipment needs to be installed and maintained. Vehicles need compatible receivers. The system needs to operate safely around other road users.

That makes dynamic charging a major infrastructure project, not simply a better charger.

Research into dynamic wireless charging has repeatedly identified technical and economic challenges around power transfer, vehicle alignment, road construction, maintenance, electromagnetic exposure and grid impacts.

Honda’s own testing reflects that reality.

Its next phase includes durability testing equivalent to one million wheel loads, power-transfer testing and work on electromagnetic-field leakage.

In other words, the difficult part is not demonstrating that wireless electricity can reach a moving vehicle.

It is making the entire road system reliable enough to operate for years.

Commercial trucks may make the economics more interesting

Passenger cars can usually tolerate charging stops because a vehicle can be parked for several hours.

Commercial vehicles are different.

A truck earns money when it is moving or delivering something.

A long charging stop therefore has a direct opportunity cost.

That makes dynamic charging potentially more valuable for trucks, buses and other high-utilisation vehicles than for private cars.

A road equipped with wireless charging could, in theory, allow commercial EVs to carry smaller batteries while maintaining useful operating ranges.

Smaller batteries could reduce vehicle weight and potentially reduce some battery costs.

But those benefits would have to be weighed against the cost of installing and maintaining charging infrastructure in the road.

That is the economic question Honda still has to answer.

Nigeria may not need Honda’s roads yet

For Nigeria, the technology is interesting precisely because it is so far ahead of the country’s immediate infrastructure problem.

The country has not yet reached a stage where every major transport corridor has reliable conventional EV charging.

That means dynamic charging roads are unlikely to be the next step for most Nigerian roads.

The more immediate opportunity is building the foundation underneath EV adoption.

That means charging stations, reliable electricity, fleet charging, battery-swapping networks where appropriate, financing, maintenance and clear standards.

It also means identifying where electrification makes commercial sense first.

Electric motorcycles, tricycles, buses and high-utilisation urban fleets may have different economics from private passenger cars.

Nigeria does not have to copy Japan’s infrastructure roadmap.

It needs to find the parts of electrification that make economic sense for its own transport system.

But the technology matters because infrastructure has a long life

There is a reason to pay attention to what Honda is building now.

Transport infrastructure lasts for decades.

Roads built today will still be operating when Nigeria’s EV fleet is much larger.

If electric mobility expands substantially, the country will eventually have to decide whether roads should remain passive surfaces or become part of the energy system.

That is a much bigger question than wireless charging.

It is about how transport, electricity and infrastructure will interact.

Honda is testing one version of that future in Japan.

Nigeria is still building the infrastructure required for the current version of the electric-vehicle future.

The gap between those two stages is large.

But it also creates an opportunity.

If Nigeria gets its basic charging, electricity and fleet infrastructure right now, it will have a better foundation for adopting more advanced technologies later.

The lesson from Honda’s experiment is therefore not that Nigerian roads should start charging cars tomorrow.

It is that the next EV business may not be the vehicle itself. It may be the infrastructure that keeps the vehicle moving.