Roads That Charge Your EV While Driving Just Became Real in Indiana
A boring-looking strip of Indiana asphalt just did something wild: it wirelessly charged a heavy-duty electric truck at 65 mph. On a 400-meter test section of U.S. 52/231 near West Lafayette, a Cummins-powered semi took in 190 kilowatts from coils buried under the pavement, according to Purdue University’s announcement. This is the first wireless charging highway in the U.S. built for real trucks, not golf carts. That matters for you because it hints at a future where stopping for “fuel” becomes the slow option.
How This Wireless Charging Highway Changes the Game for You
Engineers embedded transmitter coils under the road; matching receivers on the truck pick up power through the concrete and feed it straight into the battery. An Indiana DOT program called Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer is backing this, with the goal of expanding from this quarter-mile slab to full highway corridors if the tech proves reliable. Trade coverage spells it out even more bluntly: a “highway that draws power from beneath” and turns long-haul routes into rolling chargers for electric freight.
Photo by Artyom Lezhnyuk:
Right now, the spotlight is on semis. But once the concrete is wired, it doesn’t care what’s on top of it. If this spreads, your daily EV won’t need a monster battery to do a long commute, and your road trips will be built around short, predictable top-ups instead of big gulps at fast chargers. Gas trucks start to look like the slow option: they still have to dive off the highway, queue up, and pay whatever the pump says that week.
My Verdict: How You Let This Shape Your Next Buy
If you want your next car or truck to age well, you stop thinking of it as a sealed box and start thinking of it as a device that talks to the road. You favor EVs and plug-in trucks that already handle serious DC fast charging, sit on platforms big freight players are betting on, and keep their batteries cool under high load. You let someone else cling to the pump while you buy for a world where the road itself keeps your battery fed and your trips shorter, not longer.