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
