While all the countries are working on alternate fuel sources, China is a step ahead. The country is working on eliminating the conventional mode of transportation by developing flying cars. Though not exactly a flying car. In other words, the vehicle under experimentation uses magnetic levitation (maglev) technology. The technology will be used to “study road design and safety measures for high-speed driving,” based on the reports of China’s Xinhua News Agency. We can say that the technology will be able to make the car levitate in the air, although it won’t be something that we can call conventional flying.
To get the car to levitate, the researchers at Southwest Jiaotong University prepared a conductor rail along a 4.91-mile (7.9-kilometer) stretch of road. The carry the experiment further, eight vehicles were equipped with a permanent magnetic array in the lower part to make the car float using the laws of magnetism. The magnetic system uses magnets that repel each other. This quality of the magnet is adjusted in order to make the car move and hence give us the flying car in question.
Video of ‘flying car’ undergoing test
The vehicles in the video move at relatively slow speeds, but maglev technology can achieve high speeds. According to the Xinhua report, they reached nearly 143 miles per hour (230 kilometres per hour) in one test during this experiment. It’s unclear whether the occupant can determine the vehicle’s speed while floating or if the velocity is determined by the conductor rod in the road. Furthermore, the video shows no steering control because the people in the car are following a predetermined path.
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Based on the reports of the agency, one of the researchers mentioned that they would soon start working on developing an actual vehicle for the first maglev car. However, the report did not mention the real-world application of the technology. Until now, this technology has only been used for trains. However, the application of cars is not a new idea and has been discussed in the past.