South Korean researchers are exploring the viability of electric roads. The roads work using inductive charges, which power small car batteries as the cars travel over special strips installed in the pavement. Vehicles don’t have to contact the strips to make the system work.
A functioning prototype of the electric road has been constructed and tested with a golf cart, but the technique could be developed to work with full-sized cars and buses. Cost estimates of construction are approximately $318,000 per km of road.
If we place these strips on about 10 percent 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 140 km (90 miles) south of Seoul, for electric-powered golf carts and is working on designs that would power cars and buses.
(reuters)
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