Electric Buses Charge Quickly With This New Wireless System

Energy

One of the 25 new Long Beach Transit hybrid gasoline-electric buses on April 23, 2009. Jeff Gritchen / Digital First Media / Orange County Register / Getty Images

In Long Beach, California, some electric buses can charge along their route without cords or wires.

When a bus reaches the Pine Avenue station, it parks over a special charging pad. While passengers get on and off, the charger transfers energy to a receiver on the bottom of the bus.


“By doing in-route charging on the order of five minutes every lap we can roughly double the range of the vehicle,” he says. “So they don’t have to go back to the depot to charge, and they don’t have to use two buses to achieve the same thing that one bus can do with our charger.”

So wireless charging could help speed the transition to clean transportation.

Reposted with permission from Yale Climate Connections.

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