South Korea, Infrastructure, and Electric Cars

[IBCoupe]

Interesting article on Core77 today:

At least two of the challenges of designing a current-day electric car are based on infrastructure limitations. ... Two, the car still needs to have an entire gasoline engine wedged in there too, as there aren't enough charging stations to see mass electric car uptake from those who want to cover large distances. But a recent development in the South Korean municipality of Gumi may have an impact on electric car design that far exceeds the public bus system to which it's currently being applied.

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. ...

... 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.