Wirelessly Charge Highway

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After Indiana researchers demonstrated earlier this month that wireless highway EV charging works, Florida confirms it's breaking ground on another highway test in 2026.

In 2026, Florida will break ground on a highway that can wirelessly charge EVs at speed in a small-scale test that could have big implications for the future of mobility.

The highway is actually just a 3/4-mile portion of a larger construction project, the 4.4-mile State Road 516 (SR 516) Lake/Orange Expressway.

The Central Florida Expressway Authority (CFX) is building SR 516 in three segments. The first one, as shown on the map, will feature wireless charging technology. The highway will be open to the public when it's finished in 2029, but the charging system will only work on "specially equipped vehicles...for initial testing of the charging lane".

It remains to be seen if the project will focus on charging trucks or passenger vehicles; recent tests elsewhere have focused on trucks. In October, France activated a highway that can wirelessly charge trucks in partnership with Electreon(More details:https://ir.electreon.com/2025-10-30-Frances-wireless-charging-highway-breakthrough-marks-turning-point-for-electric-freight-trucking).

In 2023, the state of Michigan also announced that it had collaborated with Electreon to install a quarter-mile wireless-charging public roadway in Detroit for testing purposes. The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) said it planned to request bids in 2024 to rebuild part of Michigan Avenue with inductive charging installed, but that does not appear to have happened.

In a major milestone earlier this month, however, researchers at Purdue University completed the first successful wireless highway charging test in the US, in partnership with the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT). Their system charged a semi truck traveling at 65mph, delivering 190 kilowatts of power, or more than enough for smaller vehicles as well.

"This is a system designed to work for the heaviest class of trucks all the way down to passenger vehicles,” says Aaron Brovont, a research assistant professor in Purdue’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

While wireless charging is common for smaller devices, such as mobile phones, it has not yet become mainstream for electric cars. Their larger batteries pose an engineering challenge, especially when traveling at high speeds on a highway. "Because vehicles travel so much faster on highways than city roads, they need to be charged at higher power levels," says Purdue.

However, there's no question that wireless charging would be an improvement over wrangling with clunky power cords. It's also easier to make autonomous since the car can park itself over a pad and begin powering up. That's likely why Tesla plans to wirelessly charge its future robotaxis. CEO Elon Musk remarked on stage in 2024 that it was "high time" the company made that change. In April 2025, Tesla said it's also exploring wireless charging for its V4 Superchargers, but we haven't seen any yet.

Passively powering up while driving would be even better—science fiction turned reality.