On Line Electric Vehicle
KAIST OLEV
Korea Advanced Institute of Technology aka KAIST has developed another wireless power system for electric cars. The idea is that a future electric car will drop the batteries altogether. It will instead take energy from cables installed beneath the road surface. The electricity will be transmitted by magnetic induction. The cables will be safe for pedestrians to walk over.
If we are talking about an ideal world, where there are no bumps and a car can almost scratch the surface (1cm clearance), efficiency of magnetic transmission reaches 80%, in a real world (12 cm clearance), only 60% gets transmitted.
That is a problem, it will contribute to running costs. We still have to pay for 100% of electricity but get to use only 60%.
Besides, some will argue that this sort of system robs motoring of its core idea - autonomy.
Then there is a huge cost involved to install the cables. However, if and when they are installed, they would solve the worst problem we got with electric cars - the limited range. Professors at KAIST have estimate that if 50% of all Korean cars (6 million vehicles) go On Line or OLEV, the country would save $3 billion on crude oil import
At the moment it is hard to estimate the price of installing cables in the large cities but this sounds like a potentially good long time solution. It is also believed that the two advanced nuclear power stations of South Korea could deal with the surge in demand that would be generated by putting 6 million of electric cars on the streets.
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