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Electric Trolley Draws Charge From the Road

 
1,991 views Mar 27, 2010

Trolley Power By Buried Electric Cables

Trolley Power By Buried Electric Cables

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What if you could charge an electric vehicle without plugging it in?  There has been discussion before about the ability to charge battery powered items without a cable.  There has also been successful devices that do exactly that.  But what about charging something larger than say a cell phone through proximity charging?  Can it be done?

The Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has successfully done so and the vehicle charged by proximity charging is significantly larger than your average car.  The KAIST has finished work on what they call an online electric vehicle.  The vehicle, technicaly a zoo trolley, will be used to ferry zoo visitors around the facility.

It is charged by cables that are buried underground.  The cable are placed at different areas throughout the trolley's route and they are capable of either delivering charge to the trolley batteries or sending power to directly propel the vehicle.  The main advantage of the buried cable setup is that the trolley operates with a battery that is about 1/5 the size of a typical EV battery and does not require stoppage for charging.

Applying this technology to city streets and highways would certainly be costly and difficult, but this type of charging technology is both feasible and ready for real world use.

Source: AutoBlogGreen





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Comments (7)

  1. By Desertstraw Posted: 3/27/2010 4:49am PDT

    When I was a boy in Philadelphia, before GM destroyed electrified local transportation in this country, all the trolley cars were electric. You could literally go from anywhere in the city to anywhere else by trolley. Power was supplied by a high voltage line above the trolley tracks.A pole extended from the trolley to the power line. Trolleys stopped at every corner making trips convenient but slow. The fare was 7 1/2 cents with free transfers, proportionately less than today's fares. People had no idea what smog was. When I visited Kansas City, I was surprised that their trolley system was even better with trolleys running on a fixed schedule.
    There are many ways to supply power to electric vehicles which are not being considered because we are all relying on the development of better batteries, probably a good bet.
    The automobile and oil companies have convinced us that we must accept high costs, pollution, and dreadful human carnage in order to have convenient transportation. It is not true. As in many other areas, we need national leadership with vision and ability.
     
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  2. By Noel Park Posted: 3/27/2010 11:01am PDT

    I'm not going to get into GM's role in the demise of trolley transportation, but your description of Philadelphia could just as well be Los Angeles. Hundreds of miles of urban and interurban trolley lines crisscrossed the SoCal area. Ironically, the multi-billion $$ light rail lines slowly and painfully being built in this area today largely follow the old abandoned rights of way of the old system. But it will never get back to what it used to be in my generation, and probably not the next. Just too expensive.
    In San Francisco, they make extensive use of rubber tired electric buses which draw their power in much the same way you describe. They seem to work very well, and require a lot less infrastructure.
    Alas, nothing seems to change until there is a disaster. When gas gets to $6 or $8/gallon, then maybe this stuff will start to happen.
    As Joni Mitchell so famously sang, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?"
     
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  3. By Daryl Posted: 3/27/2010 7:40pm PDT

    Why does everyone seem to blame GM for the death of the electric automobile? First off, it was an experiment that they felt failed. Plus, electrics had already failed 80 years prior. They've got a chance to succeed now, but it's because technology is advancing enough. There is no conspiracy. It's simple economics. If the technology isn't good enough and cost effective enough, it simply will not sell. If it doesn't sell, companies won't make it. Period. There's no great mystery or conspiracy.
     
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  4. By Desertstraw Posted: 3/28/2010 4:53am PDT

    The source of my statement about GM is: Edwin Black, Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives. This accusation has been denied by others.
    As for the electric car, the EV1 was a successful car despite all the false information from GM, read the comments of people who leased them. After a decade the Toyota RAV4 Electric is still on the road proving that electric vehicles work.
    Please give me any other explanation of why an oil company would buy the patent for the NiMH battery and make it unavailable for all-electric vehicles other than to prevent competition. It is also puzzling as to why the terms of the settlement between Chevron and Toyota that stopped the production of the RAV4 Electric was never made public.
     
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  5. By Mike Jones Posted: 3/31/2010 11:59am PDT

    The GM EV1 was NOT a successful car. It would have cost WAY above the market and NOT SOLD.
    Get over all your ridiculous conspiracy theories. Companies want to make money using ANY technology that accomplishes that end.
    The NISSAN Leaf is going to sell like hot cakes in Calif for about $20K (after rebates). Oops! Would that ruin the environmentalist wacko conspiracy theories?
    Make something people want at a good price point. It's called THE MARKET. DUH.
     
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  6. By Desertstraw Posted: 4/1/2010 5:06am PDT

    The Market,DUH? We see what it did to our economy.
    Gee, Chevron buying the NiMH battery and locking it away from use in electric vehicles is "the market". Just give people what they want and they will buy it,ha,ha.
    Didn't the great market experts at GM say that they couldn't see how Toyota could make any money out of the Prius?
    And if you read the history of Toyota, you will discover that Toyota was on the dole from the Japanese government for a couple of decades. Now they are the biggest auto company in the world.
    And was the Sinclair a big market success? But its successors changed the world.
    The Market as a religion has as much credibility as Voodoo.
     
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  7. By  A123 kinetic vehicle Posted: 4/14/2010 10:34am PDT

    The headline, made me think of rodin coils and statically charged particle storms...
     
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