August 12, 2013 AT 4:00 am
Bus power supplied by in-road wireless-charging system
How South Korea’s New Road-Charged Buses Can Impact Electric Vehicle Design
The resident eggheads at KAIST (the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, something like South Korea’s MIT) developed a technology called Shaped Magnetic Field in Resonance, or SMFIR. It consists of power cables operating at a specific frequency, which then generates an electromagnetic field. A coil placed within a certain proximity to that field can turn that resonance into electricity. It’s essentially wireless charging, but due to the intricacies of the KAIST design, they can achieve an astonishing 85% transmission efficiency.
What Gumi has done is lay SMFIR cable underneath select stretches of road, and then kitted out two electric public buses with the SMFIR coil. The batteries in the buses are quite small—about a third the size of what you’d find in a regular electric vehicle—and planners calculated that due to the high efficiency rate of SMFIR, they only needed to wire 5% to 15% of the bus’ route to provide the requisite juice.
Check out all the Circuit Playground Episodes! Our new kid’s show and subscribe!
Have an amazing project to share? Join the SHOW-AND-TELL every Wednesday night at 7:30pm ET on Google+ Hangouts.
Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!
Learn resistor values with Mho’s Resistance or get the best electronics calculator for engineers “Circuit Playground” – Adafruit’s Apps!
Maker Business — “InstaPart: Get Any Symbol & Footprint in 24 Hours – SnapEDA”
Wearables — App know how
Electronics — To Y5V or not to Y5V?
Biohacking — Nootropic : Methylene Blue – The Mood, Memory and Energy Enhancer
1 Comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Outstanding accomplishments in the field. Korea is one country to look forward to technological advanced in the next years to come.