![]() And maglev is a comparably low-energy technology to utilize to boot. This little factoid forms a big argument for why we shouldn’t give up on the maglev car dream: An entire populace using such vehicles could speed through their commutes at incredible speeds, assuming we could keep maintain a tolerable threshold of safety. Japan managed to build and test out a prototype train that screeched up to 310 miles per hour. The Shanghai Maglev Train, operating since 2004, blows through its 18.6 mile line at a blistering 267 miles per hour, all while levitating about 1 centimeter off the ground thanks to electromagnetic suspension. And we’ve already employed magnetic levitation (maglev) in some of our transportation models. Unless we discover the secret to antigravity, the closest thing we’ll ever have to levitation is through magnets. ![]() ![]() It’s easier to make something launch up in the air than it is to keep it levitating a few feet off the ground safely and moving in a stable motion forward. levitating-is much bigger engineering struggle. Why is the hovercar destined to be an unrealized dream? It’s not simply that a flying car capable of going tens or hundreds of feet in the air has so many more advantages to it. But what they all have in common is they’re looking to fly, not hover. Each one employs a different design angled toward a different sort of vehicular experience. SkyDrive is just one of many projects around the world seeking to turn to flying car into a reality. In the meantime, however, Cartivator and Toyota are striving to have a prototype ready for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, eager to have one of the cars play a pivotal role in the lighting of the torch. He’s unable to say much more about how much this thing might cost once it’s ready to be sold and driven and flown in real life, but Mori thinks it’s reasonable to expect the SkyDrive will be more expensive than the average car. “The rotors remains folded when driving, but they unfold when transforming into flight mode,” Mori said. “Flying cars might actually be easier to produce than hovercars.” You can use the advent of the drone as an example-many types of drones these days work as multirotor systems, capable of vertical takeoff and landing, to do everything from take pictures and videos from high up to delivering packages, to watering or dusting agricultural grounds. A flying car ostensibly works much like a helicopter or an airplane, but is smaller and at lower altitudes. Turns out, flying cars might actually be easier to produce than hovercars. Now it’s 2018, and there isn't a damn hovercar in sight. ![]() It never seemed like it was too fanciful a dream since the middle of the last century, our favorite sci-fi movies and futuristic thinkers promised us flying cars in just a few decades, and certainly if that vision was still some ways away, at least we would get hovercars, right? It just happens to do so while levitating off the ground-just a few feet, sure, but still without the need for spinning wheels and traction. Like any vehicle, the goal of a hovercar is to get you from point A to point B. Of the myriad of futuristic technologies science fiction institutions like Star Wars have popularized for the mainstream public, few have felt so close to our grasp than the hovercar.
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