On-Line Electric Vehicle or OLEV is an electric vehicle system developed by KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, which charges electric vehicles wirelessly while moving using inductive charging. Segments composed of coils buried in the road transfer energy to a receiver or pickup that is mounted on the underside of the electric vehicle, which powers the vehicle and charges its battery.[1][2]
KAIST launched a shuttle service using the technology in 2009. The first public bus line that uses OLEV was launched on March 9, 2010;[3] another bus line was launched in Sejong in 2015; two more bus lines were added in Gumi in 2016;[4]: 4 all four wireless charging bus lines were shut down due to aging infrastructure. A new bus line was inaugurated in 2019 in Yuseong District.[5] Commercialization of the technology has not been successful, leading to controversy over the continued public funding of the technology in 2019.[6]
^H. Feng, R. Tavakoli, O. C. Onar and Z. Pantic, "Advances in High-Power Wireless Charging Systems: Overview and Design Considerations," in IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 886-919, Sept. 2020, doi:10.1109/TTE.2020.3012543.