Alt TextA screenshot of a post showing a red pickup truck with a mechanical arm structure attached to its bed, holding a magnet in front of a metal plate mounted on the front bumper, titled “Okay explain why this wouldn’t work”. Below, a comment from the official Volkswagen account reads “We sent this to the engineering department and they blocked us on teams.”

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[–] 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I know you joking bu, isn'tt this how those fancy asian bullet trains work?

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  • [–] 20 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

    That's magnetic levitation, and it's magnetic repulsion not attraction. The push the train away from the tracks and that balances against the gravity pushing it down onto the tracks, so it levitates. Then you just oscillate the polarity of the electromagnet to move forward.

    It allows for extremely high speed travels since there is no friction with the tracks, but in terms of efficiency it's not much better than a normal electric train. It's just faster, which in commuter trains it is what you want. But it wouldn't be much good for personal vehicle transit, even if we did magnetize all of the roads.

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