И. А. Курбасова Е. И. Силантьева

TEXT 14. MAGNETIC TRACKS FOR ELECTRIC BUSES
One of the obstacles in the development of electric ve­hicles is the limited range of travel offered by battery power. An unconventional electric-bus fleet scheduled for a test run in California, USA, promises to be a step toward solving the problem for mass-transit systems.

The battery-powered buses can be recharged on the road, drawing their power from the underground cables running along the route. There is no physical contact between the bus and the cables. Instead, the electric current flowing through the cables creates a magnetic field that is picked up by conductors beneath the chassis and absorbed by neavy-duty electrical cells that power the bus.

Unlike the streetcar and the trolleybus that are fed from the overhead cables, the electromagnetically recharged bus is free to travel limited distances off the bus route using power stored in the battery cells. With magnetical­ly-recharged buses overnight layover for recharging is not needed since the buses will replenish their power while on the go.

Today, nobody is expecting this novel system to be cost-efficient yet. Developed for about % 15 mln, the system is now in a research stage. In fact, riders of the experi­mental buses are not charged a fare.