korea's online electric vehicle gathers power from the road through wireless

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s Online Electric Vehicle Gathers Power From The Road Through Wireless Induction | Popular Science

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Korea's Online Electric Vehicle Gathers Power From The RoadThrough Wireless Induction

Previous Art ic le: This Car Nex t Ar t i c l e : Oldes t Know

By Clay Dillow Posted 03.10.2010 at 10:57 am

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Cars,Clay Dillow, electric cars,EVs, gre

tech, KAIST, Seoul

South Korea 's On l ine E lectr ic Veh ic le

It seems like every week there's a new scheme for making electric vehicles a reliable transportation option for the masses, but a team of South Koreans at Korea Advanced Ins

of Science and Technology (KAIST) today launched what may be one of the most feas ib le p lans we've seen. The Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV) gathers power magnetica

from electric strips buried below the road's surface as it travels, eliminating the need for long-term recharging.

The OLEV now in service in Seoul tows three passenger buses behind it, shuttling them around a preset route at a Seoul amusement park. Recharging strips were installed in f

segments along the route, totaling about 400 meters of battery-restoring pavement. A receiver mounted on the bus's chassis picks up the current through a contact-free magnet

system that collects juice with 70 percent efficiency. That electricity powers the motor and recharges on-board batteries that kick in when the bus isn't near a charging area.

The beauty of the OLEV isn't just that it's electric, but that, because it charges while it's operating, it rarely needs long periods to

recharge or huge batteries to store large quantities of power. KAIST researchers estimate that if the system is adapted to Seoul bus

routes -- as it should be, if it passes muster during this amusement park trial run -- only 20 percent of the roadway on bus routes would

need power strips installed. By installing the strips in places where buses idle, like bus stops and busy intersections, they can more or

less run continually using nothing but electric power and can do so with a battery one-fifth the size of that on conventional electric

vehicle.

That saves on both cost and passenger space, making the OLEV more efficient all around, and that's not even factoring in the costsavings of not having to wire entire bus routes to keep the vehicles powered. Further, once the city lays down enough electrically

charged roadway, there's nothing to stop other vehicles from adopting the tech.

There's no set timeline for rolling out OLEV tech on city bus routes, but Seoul does plan to show off the technology by using OLEVs to

bus around G20 delegates when the summit is held there in November.
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9 COMMENTS

03/10/10 at 11:28 am

So, do we think the "electrically charged roadway" would have to be on

the time? Certainly it does not for this small application since thre shou

be a sensor to tell the section of road that the tram is coming. But for t

buses and if other vehicles adopt this strategy, I wonder how it would

cycle on and off, and what kind of efficiency this energy transfer has.

Isn't this really just one step better than putting bumper car poles on al

cars?

Drewpers

l i n k to th i s co m

03/10/10 at 2:20 pm

This is certainly better than driving around slot cars! Come to think of i

why not modify slot car tracks to use this system and doing away with

slots too!

wo wl f i el i n k to th i s co m

03/10/10 at 2:22 pm

hmm why not update all electric overhead running RTD light rails to us

this system and do away with electrical overhead lines? For that matte

why not all trains run this way

wo wl f i el i n k to th i s co m

03/10/10 at 2:26 pm

Correct me if I'm wrong as it's been awhile since I thought about magn

fields and power transfer, but I don't think it would have to cycle on an

off. It would only use electricity from the "grid" when the magnetic field

disrupted by the bus being on top of it.

Although, it will take some thought to make this into a technology that be regulated and metered. As you know, you can't just give away

anything. You could regulate each station but that doesn't keep people

from stealing it and adding to the transportation authorities electricity b

SLNuke87


03/10/10 at 3:35 pm

and a slight boost to the power output could be used to fry speeding

motorists or jaywalkers

NO Ml i n k to th i s co m

03/10/10 at 3:41 pm

Now that we are talking of high power transfer to moving trucks hangin

cable over the highway is cheaper than cutting the asphalt. Only poles

every 20 meters need to be installed. When available electrically fitted

wheelers can extend their pantograph and pick up high voltage for an

electrical cruise ( while charging on-board batteries). As train

transportation is more efficient than highway transport this must be

efficient.

d iv idea t impera


03/10/10 at 4:24 pm

This is really quite good, but it will require the next generation of powe

sources to run. Citys probably couldnt handle the extra load on the grid

thor0997
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To comment, please Login .

the whole "solar collection road" works out it would be kinda possible,

fusion.


03/10/10 at 6:30 pm

if we improved on this, and placed parking-lot recharging pads, which

individually activated parking spaces, about every 100 miles along ma

us highways/interstates, with a standardized recharger-kit standard, th

would be useful/profitable. but with the Tesla Motors vehicles, which i

would rather buy than some hybrid, building recharging stations would

more efficient, less expensive.. if their range is about 300 miles per

45minute charge, (via wired charging), then we could get by with insta

recharginglots every 150 miles, or smaller lots every 75 miles, just so

nobody gets stranded somewhere halfway. I think that the transformer

style charger here would require more materials, and be more expens

due to the massive amount of coils most likely involved, the undergrou

wiring, and the asphalt/pavement.

Tesla Motors. the name makes me wonder if they will someday releas

something even more awesome, like the name Tesla brings to mind. b

with all the big corporations hungry for profit, you can't expect anything

truly epic. you remember the story, the oil companies/power companie

suppressed Tesla's inventions, He was the kind of guy that would rele

a go-phone with WiFi, touchscreen, etc. when all the phone companie

sell their WiFi-capable devices only if you buy their dataplan, because

makes them more money in the longrun, even though it defeats the

purpose of having WiFi.. i mean i know you can't have wifi everywhere

and 3g/etc. really comes in handy because it is more omnipresent.. thicharging pad is like wifi, more like bluetooth because the range is shor

in comparison.. Nikola Tesla had created a wireless power network tha

was more omnipresent, like 3g. why are we just now stumbling onto sh

range wireless power transfer when we should be doing what he was

doing? isn't that why we switched from analog to digital, so we could b

up the Wireless Power Transfer network, and Skynet?

we need to figure that stuff out. Nikola Tesla's wotk should be digitized

all to see, instead of the fairy tales with no schematics, or real

documentation. the car that ran seemingly forever on a car battery, so

electronics in vacuum tubes, an antenna and an AC motor.. the great

"Magnifying Transmitter"..

all of which was probably regarded as 'sorcery' and burned at the stak

because he was born a century or 2 too early.

jedita l ian


03/11/10 at 3:37 am

This is pretty keen stuff, but it has some limitations. It would probably w

best for fixed route vehicles.

As for the tech -- did you notice that the charging is 70% efficient. Dire

contact is pretty much 100%, so that's quite a loss.

Also, you'll want to make sure that the charging is only 'on' when the

vehicle is over it. The demo system probably doesn't generate too larg

an AC magnetic field, but much larger vehicles could require fields tha

could be hazardous to pacemakers, disk drives, and a host of other th

Plus installation of these charging areas won't be any piece of cake. Y

have to rip up fairly large sections of roadwayto install some sort of co

other field shaping device. The device will require some signficant pow

and its field may actually be distorted by nearby large metal objects.

I still think that it's a good idea -- streetcars without the fixed tracks and

high voltage lines, but it is somewhat complicated.

fo rd2go

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