The world of transportation has reached a major milestone in the form of road-powered electric vehicles. Seen for the first time in South Korea, the Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV) is a conveyance that’s wirelessly powered by an electrically charged road, allowing continuous travel without having to stop to recharge.
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Developed by a research team at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the OLEV project paves the way for nonstop transportation that requires no downtime for, say, gas refill or battery charging. Making this possible is a special road that’s embedded with electrical cables, which is responsible of powering the vehicle wirelessly through magnetic resonance. There are currently two buses that employ the technology and offer a 12-km long, inner-city route in Gumi, South Korea, while city officials plan to add 10 more by 2015 if the project turns out to be a worthwhile endeavor.
We won’t be seeing such technology to become globally ubiquitous in just a couple of years, given that adopting such high-tech means of travel requires massive road reconstruction that translates to sky-high costs. Also, the people must also be convinced enough to ditch their gas-guzzlers in favor of the OLEV.
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