Would using giant magnets on cars be better than using wheels? emissions free vehicles?

Question

why not instead of paving streets with asphalt, place giant powerful magnetic sheets on the roads today. the vehicles that drive on them can have a flat bottom and an equally powerful magnet allowing it to hover. this way,cars will use no fuel and produce no emissions. their speed could be boundless do to having friction with the ground. can this work? who can i go to with such a bright idea?

Answer 1

Produce a working model, patent it, and then shop for investors.

What you propose on a road requires the equivalent of a magnetic monopole, something which has not been shown to be able to exist.  

The majority of gasoline needed to power cars is required for the two following things:

1. Put kinetic energy into the car (i.e. get it moving)

2. Put kinetic energy into the car to keep it moving (wind resistance).

Friction from the wheels is extremely low - even if this DID work, you would find that you'd be removing the one factor that plays the smallest role in energy consumption.  Wind resistance would still be very real and you would need energy to overcome that.

Sorry - the MAGLEV trains that run on this principle still require large amounts of energy to run.

Answer 2

If we could get rid of the wheels on a vehicle we would go a lot further as in milege I agree.

Flying vehicles are better way up in the sky for safety reasons,

or else the most efficent per wieght as we know as the train, as the rail is smoothe and the friction is much less than a car per wieght.

Answer 3

welcome to 1985

Answer 4

sounds to futuristic to me...

Answer 5

Great idea, but when the world fails to heat up in 20 years, and the country is crisscrossed with magnetic roads, all the failed AGW alarmists will hold you responsible for the shift in the Earth's magnetic poles.  I will not matter that they are already shifting.  Global warming started before the industrial revolution, the hole in the ozone was there before DuPont invented Freon, and you will be sued for the wandering North Pole.

Better get a good lawyer so that you can set up a "Magnetic Offset Credit" business ahead of time.

Answer 6

Imagine all the people with body piercings stuck to the pavement

Answer 7

You are speaking in terms of permanent magnets instead of the electromagnets and hyper fast switching technology required for such a thing.

It can be done for rail and roller coasters and Disney's tram even because they travel one path and carry a large amount of passengers that make this efficient.

However it requires an enormous amount of electricity which would make this completely inefficient for single passenger vehicles.

Besides how would you turn a corner without being on a track?????  

How would you power the vehicle, sorry batteries won't cut the mustard, trains and the like are powered though the track.

Answer 8

YEAH....................maybe like our trains

Answer 9

You can probably go to your congressman; however, I believe it would be unwise from a fiscal point of view, and on that point, I'm sure it's been thought of before when you consider the magnet trains...

Sorry to rain on your parade, but trains aside, there would be monumental problems to overcome. Think of how much it would cost our infrastructure to replace our many, many, miles of road with roads of magnets. Though it may be correct to say it would be much more efficient and top speeds theoretically could be very high, how would you regulate traffic? People are going every direction in cars, and how would you slow them down enough to avoid hitting people going in a perpendicular direction? Also, sonic booms would be highly unpleasant in populated areas.

The list goes on.

Answer 10

NO,Sounds good in theory but how would you be able to brake quickly?Probably be easier to have a flying car.

Answer 11

you obviously have no idea how much power this system would need to run it properly. I think if we got another better way to generate our power it could be possible but by then we will probably all be in flying machines as our main mode of transport not saying its not a good idea just in my opinion not practical right now

Answer 12

There are two problems with your plan.

1--Magnets tend to lose power over time.  The cost of repaving the roads in magnets would be significantly more expensive that asphalt.

2--Rolling resistance of a vehicle uses an average of 15% of the power of the engine.  So, in order to actually move the vehicle once it is hovering on these magnets, it still takes 85% of the fuel you would have used if you just had tires.  If the cost of your retrofit is more than 15% of the current cost of paving a road and maintaining tires on a car, it is not economically feasible.

And the speed would not be boundless, as air resistance is the biggest drag on a vehicle.