Roads that charge electric-powered vehicles?

Wednesday, August 14, 2013, 3:10 PM -

If emerging technology in Korea has its way no longer will electric-powered vehicles need to be stopped in order to charge. Koreans have taken electric car technology to the next level with buses that are able to charge simply by driving on a stretch of road designed to top up the vehicle. 

Researchers at Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have been working on a twelve kilometer asphalt road that acts as a charging station for moving vehicles. They work using specialized electric cables that are imbedded below the asphalt and create electromagnetic fields to the bus. 

The road doesn't appear to affect vehicles that don’t run on electricity. The buses use a receiving device on the under-body of the vehicle. A coil in the battery of these specialized cars then intakes the electromagnetic fields and turns them into electricity. As such, cars without this device will be unaffected by the power strips on these roads. 

The first road using this "Shaped Magnetic Field in Resonance" technology has been constructed in Gumi in South Korea. So far KAIST is testing two buses on these roads to see how they fair in comparison to other vehicles. They will serve a twenty-four kilometer inner city route for the duration of a year. After this time, the city of Gumi plans on using ten more buses that use this technology. 

If successful, this could become a big deal for those manufacturing electric cars. It could mean that more people turn to buying the vehicles which would also help reduce the number of emissions regular gas-fueled cars put into the atmosphere.