Magnetic Freeway (& Retro-fit)

You're possibly aware of the technology of propulsion of vehicles using the opposing forces from magnets.
I believe there are such systems for railway like carriages.
This has been a thought topic for my father for many years.
Recently, I came up with an interesting twist. If you can make personal (car-like) travel by these means, you could use ferrying technology to make it possible for today's cars to use the system.
Rather than having to replace the entire vehicle, you could drive your car onto a trailer-like contraption (carrying one or more vehicles) and these 'trailers' could have the magnetic technology to use the magnetic freeway, rather than having to retro-fit the entire vehicle.
Anyone know much about how this technology is currently or soon-to-be used?

Not sure exactly what system you are talking about but then I don't keep to updated on technology? I technology being the hovercraft type => vehicle floating around on a cushion of air & the other being using supercooled magnetic fields? The air type are employed as ferries for vehicles & magnetic fields are used for high speed trains. Air vehicles are not as efficient as wheeled transportation & monorails require the magnetic properties of the rail to produce lift. Which makes neither especially conducive as energy efficient vehicles (cars, trucks, etc). But keep thinking outside the box, there are better ways, we tend to become programed by common means available to follow continue along those lines of thinking & transportation.

Gold I have been talking about a mass transit system such as yours for many years. I think that super magnets could be the way of the future I did some research and MAGLEV sound like it could solve our transit needs. MAGLEV, or magnetic levitation, is a system of transportation that suspends, guides and (usually) propels vehicles, predominantly trains, using magnetic forces. This method has the potential to be faster, quieter and smoother than wheeled mass transit systems, potentially reaching velocities comparable to turboprop and jet aircraft (900 km/h, 600 mph).

For more research http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev_train

I've seen MagLev too... Amazing that it's finally out there.
As you said, it's something that's been on the minds for years.
It would be interesting if it gets applied to roads as well as rail...

I guess my idea was basically somehow retrofitting current technology where economical to do so...

My idea was to create a system of rails in a super highway fashion. So these means retro fitting all existing roads with MAGLEV tech, we could use current electromagnetic suspension (EMS) systems to propel a retro fitted car that also uses EMS.

The only problem with the system is its complexity and resources it would take to make a functioning system but we can dream.

The idea does sound promising, however the technology that exists for Mag-Lev wouldn't work on a road, for much the same reason that our cars don't run on rails, namely that in order for it to go somewhere other than it's pre-set course, required a physical change in the orientation of the rails (Mag-Lev is just another sort of rail in reality). Theoretically it should be possible to create a system in which individual vehicles hover above a magnetically charged roadway using magnetic repulsion to both hover and direct themselves, however there is currently no reason to create such a system for several main reasons:

The first and most of obvious has already been mentioned here, the prohibitive cost of implementing such a system on a national scale.

The second is that of speed. Mag-Lev was designed to allow faster trains by removing friction, however with a human controlled vehicle this is pointless as the speed limits in place are unlikely to be changed, as human reactions are not reliably good enough to deal with traffic moving at several hundred kilometres an hour.

Thirdly the actual running of such a system would be pointless, the individual consumer would spend more running a vehicle because the energy used to raise the vehicle of the ground is higher than that saved by removing friction, plus the machinery is far more complex and thus harder to maintain. Road tax would increase at least a hundred fold to cover running costs of the magnetic roads. Mag-Lev trains cost far less as they require only the section they are currently above to be magnetised in comparison with a road system that would have to be constantly magnetised in it's entirety as the vehicles would be separately controlled to the roadway.

The fourth point is usefulness, introducing Mag-Lev roads would limit the use of a car. Trains follow a pre-set path, whereas road vehicles go all over the place. Mag-Lev vehicles would be incapable of off road movement, unless it's being proposed that such vehicles also have wheels.

All in all you're better of waiting until someone can reliably produce a Heim drive (artificial gravity drive) then we can all have our own private "Nebuchadnezzar" (Morpheus' ship in the matrix) or at least something like the "Mule" from Firefly/Serenity.

Sorry for raining on everyone's parade. I'll go away now.

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All in all you're better of waiting until someone can reliably produce a Heim drive (artificial gravity drive) then we can all have our own private "Nebuchadnezzar" (Morpheus' ship in the matrix) or at least something like the "Mule" from Firefly/Serenity.

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Hmm . . . a heim- prototype pre-existed modern air craft at least in a sense! They were called 'lighter-than-air' crafts.

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Sorry for raining on everyone's parade. I'll go away now.

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Oh, don't go away,the fantasy nature of creative thinking can always use a dose of reality (reality check) to keep things in the viable (plausible) realm of existing technology.

I had an idea that I used in a science fiction story I wrote once about a moving pedestrian walkway that ran at super fast speeds around a city. When you got on to it you were somehow held firm by manipulating gravity and an electrical current of sorts in your ear influenced your balance so you don't feel dizzy. I think it would be great if we didn't need to waste resources and energy and polluting the atmosphere building vehicles at all.
As to the magnetic vehicles, which is still a cool idea in my mind, I was just wondering how the magnetism would affect people physically?

Had a related idea to transport... Basically works on beaming electricity from one place to another, without wires... (As mentioned in another recentish post)...
The difference would be that the object is moving, where electricity is beamed to car(s) to power the motor...
D'you think that could work?

the tech for wireless power is not advance enough. the application for it are small scale like cellphone chargers toothbrush changers, but if there was a way to supercharge and dispatch that power to automobiles it would revolutionize mass our mass transit system.

With regards to the moving walkway, the most problematic thing would be the damage cause by wind resistance, which is why high speed vehicles are sealed capsules. So short of working out how to produce a localised force field, high speed mass transit will always require a vehicle (besides the fact that your walkway would have to stop to let people on and off making it effectively no different from a train/subway).

As for transmitted power, the technology does exist at a slightly higher level than you mentioned cryptic. Scientists claim to be able to power a light bulb at a distance of 3ft with about 95% efficiency, which is quite impressive, but compared to the efficiency of a wired system is a colossal waste of power. It's highly unlikely (if not impossible) that wireless power sources will ever match wired sources for efficiency, especially at any distance. Meaning that once again, even if we did bother with the infrastructure costs, we still lose out on any ability to go off road. Though if the efficiency ever became high enough there is no reason not to use it with train lines (as it would be much safer than the current overhead lines).

I think electrically powered cars are most likely the future of personal transport (until we finally get teleporters installed), but I'd say that those cars are still going to have to be carrying either a battery or some method of extracting power from the surroundings (so basically solar, as the stupidity of trying to use wind power should be blindingly obvious).

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I think electrically powered cars are most likely the future of personal transport but I'd say that those cars are still going to have to be carrying either a battery or some method of extracting power from
the surroundings (so basically solar, as the stupidity of trying to use wind power should be blindingly obvious).

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I would think that a (hybrid) vehicle using multiple sources is in intermediate future car. Looking at the existing power source (internal combustion engine)

1) I note inefficiency beside incomplete burning the fuel, it produces a lot of heat. So if the exhaust gas was vented into a heat exchanger (with air to produce more complete reaction) to use the wasted energy as steam to produce a hybrid combustion/steam design would increase the efficiency of the power source . . .

2) I would point out that - while I never owned a Harley, I did stick with the 4-stroke version of rice rockets (reference to imported Japanese bikes) which smaller displacement & generally 2-strokers. Which meant they run at higher rpm to develop power and therefore tend to wear more than the 4-stroke version. I mention this as steam engines are by nature a (single) 1-stroke engine . . . allowing large bore similar to (single cylinder type 4-stroke engines) thumper yet producing smooth even power of multiple cylinder engines.

http://www.captaincynic.com/thread/80893/what-happened-to-solar-powered-
cars.htm#81250

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He also ran a couple of generators (alternators) off the drive shaft to recharge on the go.

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3)Of course it would be more efficient to drive the alternators off the crankshaft. (as it continues to spin even when the vehicle is stopped) Then using the drive shaft itself as an electric motor coupled to the hybrid engine.

The hybrid engine would operate at lower rpm (idling) while the electric motor retained velocity of the vehicle. Such a hybrid engine would be more efficient means of transporting goods (trucking) as the combustion side (half) would produce torque & heat as the steam side came up to operating temperature. The steam side would only need sufficient heat to produce steam allowing the combustion side to only be fired (fueled) intermittently to maintain operating temperature & acceleration.
Like the diesel engine, a steam engine has gobs of low end torque thus providing initial spin of the drive shaft (electric motor) . Which would be more efficient as it would tend to keep the shaft spinning requiring less torque via the hybrid motor decreasing fuel consumption, shorter (smaller) rpm => power band requirements.

I recognised something obvious I had not seen before on this topic.
There are already power lines along most streets... Electrifying the road
or having a number or recharge points just about anywhere should not be too hard, considering...