Magnetic road strips could power electric cars

SOUTH Korea’s top technology university has developed a plan to power electric cars through recharging strips embedded in roadways that use a technology to transfer energy found in some electric toothbrushes.

The plan, still in the experimental stage, calls for power strips about 20cm to 90cm wide and perhaps several hundred metres long to be built into the top of roads.

Vehicles with sensor-driven magnetic devices on their underside can suck up energy as they travel over the strips without coming into direct contact.

“If we place these strips on about 10 per cent of roadways in a city, we could power electric vehicles,” said Cho Dong-ho, the manager of the “online electric vehicle” plan at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

The university has built a prototype at its campus in Daejeon, about 140km south of Seoul, for electric-powered golf carts and is working on designs that would power cars and buses.

The system that can charge several vehicles at once would allow electric cars and buses to cut down on their battery sizes or extend their ranges.

The non-contact transfer of electricity, also called inductive charging, works by magnets and cables on the underside of the vehicle making a connection with the current in the recharging strip to receive power as they travel over it.

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Tags: direct contact, electric vehicle, electric vehicles, experimental stage, Innovation, magnetic devices, power electric cars, power strips, science and technology

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Innovation, Project Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.