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

Korea's Online Electric Vehicle Gathers Power From The Road

Through Wireless Induction
By Clay Dillow Posted 03.10.2010 at 10:57 am

South Korea's Online Electric Vehicle

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 Institute
of Science and Technology (KAIST) today launched what may be one of the most feasible plans we've seen. The Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV) gathers power magnetically
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 four
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 magnetic
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 RELATED ARTICLES
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 Eight-Wheeled, 230 MPH
need power strips installed. By installing the strips in places where buses idle, like bus stops and busy intersections, they can more or Electric Car to Spawn a
less run continually using nothing but electric power and can do so with a battery one-fifth the size of that on conventional electric Bus
vehicle.
America’s EV Revolution
That saves on both cost and passenger space, making the OLEV more efficient all around, and that's not even factoring in the cost Begins Not with a
savings of not having to wire entire bus routes to keep the vehicles powered. Further, once the city lays down enough electrically Speedster But With a
charged roadway, there's nothing to stop other vehicles from adopting the tech. Delivery Van

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 The Future of Public
bus around G20 delegates when the summit is held there in November. Transportation Will Involve
Personal Helicopters, Mag-
Lev Cars and Zeppelins

TAGS
Cars, Clay Dillow, electric cars, EVs, green
tech, KAIST, Seoul

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9 COMMENTS

Drewpers 03/10/10 at 11:28 am

So, do we think the "electrically charged roadway" would have to be on all
the time? Certainly it does not for this small application since thre should
be a sensor to tell the section of road that the tram is coming. But for the
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 all our
cars?

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03/10/10 at 2:20 pm
This is certainly better than driving around slot cars! Come to think of it
why not modify slot car tracks to use this system and doing away with
slots too!

wowlfie
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03/10/10 at 2:22 pm
hmm why not update all electric overhead running RTD light rails to use
this system and do away with electrical overhead lines? For that matter
why not all trains run this way

wowlfie
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SLNuke87 03/10/10 at 2:26 pm

Correct me if I'm wrong as it's been awhile since I thought about magnetic
fields and power transfer, but I don't think it would have to cycle on and
off. It would only use electricity from the "grid" when the magnetic field was
disrupted by the bus being on top of it.

Although, it will take some thought to make this into a technology that can
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 bill.

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03/10/10 at 3:35 pm
and a slight boost to the power output could be used to fry speeding
motorists or jaywalkers

NOM
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divideatimpera 03/10/10 at 3:41 pm

Now that we are talking of high power transfer to moving trucks hanging a
cable over the highway is cheaper than cutting the asphalt. Only poles
every 20 meters need to be installed. When available electrically fitted 18
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.

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thor0997 03/10/10 at 4:24 pm

This is really quite good, but it will require the next generation of power
sources to run. Citys probably couldnt handle the extra load on the grid. If

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

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

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jeditalian 03/10/10 at 6:30 pm

if we improved on this, and placed parking-lot recharging pads, which are
individually activated parking spaces, about every 100 miles along major
us highways/interstates, with a standardized recharger-kit standard, that
would be useful/profitable. but with the Tesla Motors vehicles, which i
would rather buy than some hybrid, building recharging stations would be
more efficient, less expensive.. if their range is about 300 miles per
45minute charge, (via wired charging), then we could get by with installing
recharginglots every 150 miles, or smaller lots every 75 miles, just so
nobody gets stranded somewhere halfway. I think that the transformer-pad
style charger here would require more materials, and be more expensive,
due to the massive amount of coils most likely involved, the underground
wiring, and the asphalt/pavement.
Tesla Motors. the name makes me wonder if they will someday release
something even more awesome, like the name Tesla brings to mind. but
with all the big corporations hungry for profit, you can't expect anything
truly epic. you remember the story, the oil companies/power companies
suppressed Tesla's inventions, He was the kind of guy that would release
a go-phone with WiFi, touchscreen, etc. when all the phone companies
sell their WiFi-capable devices only if you buy their dataplan, because it
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.. this
charging pad is like wifi, more like bluetooth because the range is shorter
in comparison.. Nikola Tesla had created a wireless power network that
was more omnipresent, like 3g. why are we just now stumbling onto short-
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 bring
up the Wireless Power Transfer network, and Skynet?
we need to figure that stuff out. Nikola Tesla's wotk should be digitized for
all to see, instead of the fairy tales with no schematics, or real
documentation. the car that ran seemingly forever on a car battery, some
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 stake
because he was born a century or 2 too early.

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ford2go 03/11/10 at 3:37 am

This is pretty keen stuff, but it has some limitations. It would probably work
best for fixed route vehicles.

As for the tech -- did you notice that the charging is 70% efficient. Direct
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 large of
an AC magnetic field, but much larger vehicles could require fields that
could be hazardous to pacemakers, disk drives, and a host of other things.

Plus installation of these charging areas won't be any piece of cake. You'll
have to rip up fairly large sections of roadwayto install some sort of coil or
other field shaping device. The device will require some signficant power,
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.

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