Feasible, but only if
Using magnets made from legpullium-takingthepissium alloy doped with unobtainium, ultra rapidly cooled from liquid state to preserve its amorphous metallic glass structure.
VW STUNS WORLD+DOG WITH REAL HOVER-CAR!
It would be nice if it were true, but El Reg has difficulty believing that this video of a VW concept hover-car in China is genuine: The premise of the video is this: VW decided to crowd-source ideas for concept cars in China – a branding exercise it dubbed the Peoples' Car Project (recalling, the genesis of the marque) – …
-
-
-
-
-
Saturday 12th May 2012 03:18 GMT jake
@Vic (was: Re: spinny!)
Do a little research ... Kerry McLean comes to mind. I happened to be at Bonneville a little over a decade ago when he set a 45MPH record ... on a bar stool ;-)
He's a mad inventor, and a good engineer. Bad web site, but grit your teeth & find the pictures over a pint. Worth it for a grin on the human ability to say "the HELL I can't do that!"
-
Saturday 12th May 2012 08:10 GMT Vic
Re: @jake (was: spinny!)
> Do a little research
Do your own research.
Just because someone built a monowheel does not mean that they are useful. They fundamentally cannot brake hard., as just a few minutes' reading or thinking would dsemonstrate.
It's possible to build a 1200cc unicycle. That doesn't make it a practical vehicle.
Vic.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Thursday 10th May 2012 10:42 GMT Tony Paulazzo
win
Best car advert ever, 5 minutes later and I can still remember the name of the manufacturer, VW - compared to all those other adverts where car drives along stunning scenery on empty road.
FFS I even watched the entire ad on youtube (had to click to watch), and I hate adverts, and then the great sciencey commentards, thumbs up.
-
Monday 14th May 2012 15:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: win
...but not nearly as good as the 'Un-pimp ze auto' ads; I remember those *years* later. And even though I know that it's not like the Wolfsburg execs sat around and thought that up because that's how they roll, they at least approved it - which does say a little bit about the corporate culture. To the extent that a company like VW has one.
A side note: I was at a few auto shows a couple of years back, during setup, and during the last 12 hours before the show opened (or more usually, the noxious 'VIP preview', where wealth creators in tuxedos pretended to be interested in Ford Transit vans while their boozed-up trophy wives ran riot in motion simulators) it was always complete bedlam. 50 lift trucks roaring around beeping, creatives yelling about where vinyl stickers went, people adjusting lights, right up until the minute the doors opened. Panic in the streets, frayed nerves, yelling, banging, every booth a riot of panic and anger.
Except VW.
I remember looking around at the chaos - imagine a long, slow pan right-to-left, with one of those cheesy action movie 'Aiiyaagh!' falling-off-something-and-dying screams a few seconds in - and right in the center of my view was the VW booth, pristine white, complete, sparkling, with one old janitor dude sweeping away a fine coat of MDF dust, kicked up by other booths' circular saws, which had accumulated on vee-dub's shining tile floor.
It was 2008. That year, if I recall correctly, Wolfsburg were the only manufacturer to post a profit and a rise in stock price.
-
-
-
Thursday 10th May 2012 12:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Come on at least the Hitler Diaries where believable for a while longer than this! It's all very nice and clever and I like the touch with the CGI'd tin-can halfway through but seriously? If this were even remotely true it would all over the media like a freaking rash!
Jesus wept, no doubt some of you lot still turn up a Copperfield show and still say, "Wow! How's he do that?!".
-
-
Thursday 10th May 2012 13:23 GMT Vic
Re: Yes but...
> what would happen if VW did throw some of its GDP-of-a-small-country
> R&D budget at creating a hovercar
Someone would crash it.
The trouble with having no direct contact with the ground is that all acceleration needs to be done by way of vectored thrust - directed fans and the like. Unless your name is Apollo and you have a big "USA" decal on the side, that thrust tends to be comparatively low compared to the mass of the vehicle. So you get comparatively small acceleration.
That means you have to look much further ahead, and plan your manoeuvres much more carefully. Which won't happen, and so drivers will go careering into stationary objects. Frequently.
There are a few places around where you can go and drive hovercraft. It's excellent fun - but you'll come away with an unshakeable belief that such vehicles are not fit for the public road...
Vic.
-
-
Saturday 12th May 2012 17:14 GMT Boyd Crow
Cute but bogus
The primary giveaway is braking, although the same applies to forward motion. You can't brake effectively with maglev because forces fall off too rapidly when not normal to the repelled surface. Friction or reaction thrusters have to be used. Gimbaled gyroscopes could be used for rotation. There also appears to be some blurring underneath the vehicle for which there is no plausible explanation.
-
Thursday 17th May 2012 21:52 GMT Anonymous Coward
Theoretically possible
But using the new near room temperature superconductors based on the senary oxocuprates.
I came up with a way to make this work by using a Manhattan Project method of enriching barium so that the specific isotope responsible for the gravity nullification effect is present in the finished material and also increases the useable fraction.
The way this works is that the virtual electrons present in the spinning superconductor are so energetic that they displace the Higgs bosons and therefore neutralise the mass of the object above the disk with a relatively well defined boundary so that it isn't lifting the entire atmosphere.
Can you say "DIY hoverboard" ?! Seriously has no-one else even thought of enriching isotopes before, it seems novel enough.
Patent pending maybe?
AC/DC 6EQUJ5
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
