Japan’s largest automotive supplier, Denso, is developing an inductive charging technology that could hit public roads by 2029. It could upend Japan’s charging infrastructure headache and make the charging cable and oversized battery packs relics of the past.
With its highly urbanized profile, symbolized by highways on the eleventh floor of high-rise buildings, Japan is difficult to electrify. Rolling out charging infrastructure is a nightmare, which is one of the reasons why the nation, and foremost Toyota, won’t drop its hydrogen ambitions.
Together with Tokyo University
However, Toyota-affiliated component giant Denso is pushing hard for a fundamentally different direction: induction charging, which occurs when electricity flows invisibly, continuously, and without the driver doing a thing, from the road into a moving vehicle.
The concept is called Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer. Denso has been working and refining it for several years and has now formalized its most ambitious commitment to date.
The University of Tokyo has signed a ten-year research agreement. But the collaboration bears fruit much sooner: a deployable, commercially viable system should be in place by 2029.
The technology relies on the familiar principle of charging a phone without a cable: electromagnetic induction. Coils embedded beneath the road surface generate an alternating magnetic field; a receiver mounted on the vehicle’s underside converts that field back into electrical current and feeds it to the battery. Scale it up across hundreds of meters of motorway, and a vehicle can, in theory, top up continuously as long as it stays on the equipped stretch.
Fifty hours, 500 kilometers, no plug
Denso ran a sustained demonstration at its headquarters that delivered exactly that result at test scale. Over 50 continuous hours, a vehicle equipped with the company’s receiver covered 500 kilometers without a single charging stop. The test was not about speed; it was about consistency. Denso President Shinnosuke Hayashi: “This technology could break through limitations and change the face of mobility.”
The University of Tokyo partnership is designed to bridge the gap between controlled demonstrations and real-world infrastructure. Next to the technology, a lot needs to be covered: grid integration, vehicle alignment at motorway speeds, billing systems, safety certifications, and so on.
Catching up
Denso is candid about one uncomfortable fact: despite its higher need for inductive charging, Japan is behind. Europe and the United States have moved faster.
Electreon’s A10 project on a motorway southwest of Paris is now the world’s first wireless charging highway capable of delivering over 200 kW to a moving truck. Germany is installing a 1-kilometer inductive segment on the A6 motorway in Bavaria. Detroit activated the first US wireless charging road in partnership with Ford.
Beyond eliminating charging stops, inductive charging delivers a second, structurally more significant benefit: it allows EVs to run with much smaller battery packs.
Today’s vehicles are designed with capacities partly sized for worst-case range scenarios. But if a car can top up during travel, the battery issue changes completely. A lighter vehicle not only drives better and consumes less fuel, but also causes less road damage.
The central obstacle, of course, remains cost. Embedding coils across kilometers of road surface runs into millions per kilometer. For this reason, Denso plans to prioritize high-traffic corridors in the first phase.
