The range of movement that you can enjoy on these crafts is stunning. This benefit alone is the strongest driving force and motivation for scientists – who want to save the world from environmental degradation – to work on it. As a result, they become very fuel efficient. Since they fly, these cars do not have to counter road friction. Firstly, these are the greenest of the green cars. On a practical front, the advantages are enormous. They’ve named it “People’s Car Project” and are building it in a country which has the most number of people – China. The probable design is a two seater a disc like structure (that’s the image at the top of this article,) which looks more like a cylindrical capsule, can stay suspended a few inches above ground level and can zoom forward. VW has been developing a prototype of a Maglev triggered suspended car using ideas from people. VW is German you see, and when it comes to automobiles, the Germans cannot let anything as juicy as this slip through their fingers. Volkswagen has shown interest in this technology, which is not surprising really. But then, NASA, which has always been attracted by futuristic things that seem alien to earth, has taken a keen interest in the technology in collaboration with Unimodal, the company which is responsible for inventing the SkyTran. Magnetic forces keep the vehicle slightly suspended over the tracks and guide the route of the train and trains are able to travel at speeds of over 150mph.Īll of us are. While trains do not zoom in mid air, there is a slight gap between the tracks and the train. Maglev technology is in contrast to hovercraft technology in which vehicles are cushioned on a bed of air.Magnetic forces are already in the fore and are being used to drive trains. Simple as it sounds, there is tremendous thought and precision required to make this happen. Magnetic levitation, fondly called Maglev, is the method through which a vehicle is suspended in the air by using magnetic force to counter gravitational force which pulls the vehicle towards the ground. The question is how? What is Magnetic Levitation? If something can make cars fly, magnets can. Thanks to our good old magnetic force, this is considered to be one of the strongest forces on earth and the only force which is potent enough to defy gravity. Well, not for the nerds who spend their time pouring over spooky technologies and figuring out ways to make a car stay suspended in air. Soon, you might just be able to park your car right outside the window of your girlfriend’s fifth floor apartment and pick her up for a date – in the skies – how “heavenly” is that! Nor did he reveal how long Toyota has worked on the idea-so we're not expecting flying Priuses any time soon.Hovering cars might no longer be only an object of fantasy. Yoshiki, speaking at Bloomberg's Next Big Thing Summit in San Francisco, wouldn't elaborate further on the company's ideas, so it's unknown how close such an idea is to reality. And losing contact with the road entirely needs lots of energy and usually lots of speed, too-think jet aircraft, rather than a Toyota Yaris.ĭON'T MISS: Volkswagen Anti-Texting Ad Is Brilliantly Simple, Incredibly Frightening: Video Without turning the car into a giant aircraft wing this probably isn't a simple process, as friction is rather important to a car's ability to go, stop and corner. This is more likely to mean microns than inches, but the aim is to reduce road friction. The car won't so much be hovering in free space as "a little bit away" from the road. Unfortunately, we're not going to have something approximating the Jetsons' car, nor even Luke Skywalker's speeder any time soon. According to The Verge (via Jalopnik), the project is underway at one of Toyota's "most advanced" research and development areas. Somewhere inside Toyota there's a team of engineers who still have that 1960s innocence, as Toyota managing officer Hiroyoshi Yoshiki has just revealed the company is working on a real-life hover car, or at least investigating the potential.
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