There are plenty of interesting things in the tech domain to come out of Korea and yet another is their latest innovation called OLEV. OLEV or Online Electric Vehicles are being used in South Korea on a specific section of their highway. Using power cables that don’t run overheard but are instead placed beneath the surface of the road are designed to charge OLEV compliant cars using magnetic resonance transfer. Naturally this would require a bit of upheaval on the roads so the system would take awhile longer to be implemented on a larger scale.
Vehicles equipped for OLEV will feature compatible regulators and inverters to conduct power to onboard systems. There are quite a few benefits that tend to arise out of this free, yes free, source of energy for vehicles. OLEV cars could simply be parked on a street and get charged automatically without needing to be near a plug point for charging via a bulky cable. It would also mean you’ll probably not really run out of energy anytime soon seeing as you’ll be driving while the car is being charged. That’s all quite fascinating and the system is already in use on a 15-mile stretch of public highway in the Gumi city of Korea. A couple of buses outfitted with OLEV tech are being run here to test out the system and the country plans on increasing that number of buses from two 10 in the next two years. It’s a great incentive to encourage people to switch over to electric cars and reduce their carbon footprint.
[Via – Slashgear]