- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
Electric buses which their developers say can run all day are set to begin service.
A fleet of eight new electric vehicles will operate along a busy route in Milton Keynes from late January.
The buses can run for longer by virtue of a wireless booster charge they receive at the start and end of the route from plates in the road.
The buses are the first of their kind to operate in the UK.
Inductive charging
The fleet will run on the Number 7 route, which covers 25km (15 miles) between the Milton Keynes suburbs of Wolverton and Bletchley and carries an estimated 800,000 passengers a year.
After a night charging at the depot, the buses will receive booster charges throughout the day at the start and end of the route.
There, the bus parks over plates buried in the road. The driver then lowers receiver plates on the bottom of the bus to within 4cm of the road surface and the bus is charged for around 10 minutes before resuming service.
The system uses a process called inductive charging. Electricity passes through wire coils in the road plates, generating a magnetic field. This field induces a voltage across coils in the bus plates and the vehicle's batteries are charged.
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25621426
