South Korea tries recharging road to power vehicles

you have to love this idea .... I hope it works because it's brilliant and wacky!

South Korea's top technology university has developed a plan to power electric cars through recharging strips embedded in roadways that use a technology to transfer energy found in some electric toothbrushes. The plan, still in the experimental stage, calls for placing power strips about 20 cm (8 inches) to 90 cm (35 inches) wide and perhaps several hundred meters long built into the top of roads. Vehicles with sensor-driven magnetic devices on their underside can suck up energy as they travel over the strips without coming into direct contact.

Link

The best thing about this is that I can also recharge my toothbrush on the way to work by just keeping it in the car.

So how are the strips in the roads powered? Nuclear, oil, coal, magic?

Not that this would be a problem in Korea but are the strips powered 24/7 even when there's very little or no traffic? Is that less of a waste or more of a waste? Would they work under snow? How cleanly would they have to be plowed to function?

It's just another "neat" (read: impractical) idea to suck up as many "enviro-dollars" for the people involved as it can before the next "neat" idea comes along.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


I hear you .... imagine if each strip was connected to a solar panel array with a buried battery ... perfect free energy and totally off the grid.

That would really be "neat".

Here in South Africa they started an initiative to convert all major intersection traffic lights to work off solar. They started this because our National Electricity Supplier cannot supply all of South Africa, and they were making more profit selling electricity to our neighbours, or were "donating" electricity to Zimbabwe.