We have been reading about maglev trains and all the effort that is being put into the project, however, it seems as if the future is already here with the world’s first hover car system all set to be built in Israel and being in operation as a pilot scheme in 2015.
This particular hover system was built by a firm based in US with its HQ located at NASA Research Center in California and goes by the name of skyTran. The project will kick off as a 1,640 ft long pilot scheme that will be located at the Israel Aerospace Industries campus. Once the test phase is over and if the results are good, the next phase will involve incorporating a ‘guideway’ in Tel Aviv – a city in Israel. The ‘guideway’ is the name given to the track that the cars will follow by skyTran. This particular ‘guideway’ will be 4.3 miles long. Apart from the Guideway, Tel Aviv will also host three stations, a number of two-seater cars. Tel Aviv will incur the overall cost for the project that shall be roughly $50 million. This could be a great new project for the city as Tel Aviv has no subway system and is usually gridlocked.
SkyTran’s CEO, Jerry Saunders, said; ‘It can handle 12,000 people an hour per guideway, and that number grows exponentially with each additional guideway,” said Saunders. “That is more than a light rail and equal to three lanes of highway.’ The cars that will be employed for the test phase shall reach the speed of 43 Mph, however, once the commercial version is imparted, these cars will be capable of speeds that will be over 150 Mph.
The system, as per the information given, shall work in collaboration with smartphones. Passengers will be able to book a car that will pick them up from the user specified station and once the passenger is safely seated, the car will levitate up to about 20 feet off from the ground and then speed away. US and India’s transportation officials shall be monitoring the pilot scheme too since they have plans of incorporating the same setup in their respective countries.
