A South Korean City, Gumi, has launched the world's first fleet of road-powered electric buses for regular transportation.
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) invented the technology behind the Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV), which is now used by the government to run wirelessly charged buses between the Gumi train station and In-Dong district. Currently, two buses are seen in action and the city plans to add 10 more buses to its fleet over the next two years.
The buses charge wirelessly through the newly-built roads that have electric cables and wires embedded below the surface. The magnetic-resonance transfers energy to the network's vehicles at a 6.7-inch gap between the road and the bus and the buses charge at 100 kw with 85 percent charging efficiency. The charging plates remain turned off until a bus approaches, and are installed in only 5 to 15 percent of the total route. These buses eliminate the need for a charging station and can be charged on the go every trip.
The on-board batteries are one-third the size of a traditional electric car battery. Each bus sports two batteries. According to the researchers, most batteries are a "technological barrier against consumers' desire for a common transportation vehicle."
"It's quite remarkable that we succeeded with the OLEV project so that buses are offering public transportation services to passengers," Dong-Ho Cho, a professor of electrical engineering, said in a press release. "This is certainly a turning point for OLEV to become more commercialized and widely accepted for mass transportation in our daily living."
