Hitachi presents the world’s fastest lift. And by fastest, we do mean, fastest. Beating all previous records, even that of Taiwan’s Taipei 101 building where passengers are transported from the fifth to the 89th floor in approximately 37 seconds with a speed of 60.6km/h, Hitachi claims to have made a lift installed in a skyscraper in Guangzhou, China, that can reach a speed of 72km/h.
Rephrasing that in lay-man terms, it would take a lift about 43 seconds to fling a passenger from the 1st to the 95th floor at the Guangzhou CTF Financial Centre.
The skyscraper building is still under construction though and is expected to be completed by 2016.
According to the company, the hardest part in making and designing such a high speed lift was ensuring a comfortable ride, because according to an expert in lift technology, Dr Gina Barney, protecting the passengers from pain and discomfort while travelling at such high speeds is not easy.
“When you’re traveling that distance, you’re going to get pressures on your ears changing,” she told the BBC. “That’s probably the most significant problem with high-speed travel in buildings – people suffer some pain.”
Hitachi claims to counter this problem by installing guiding rollers that warp according to the surrounding pressure which would ensure that the ride remained smooth. But in case of a technical problem that Hitachi claims unlikely, brakes that resist extreme heat are installed.
The building’s architectural design gives away that it will have a total of 95 lifts, out of which twenty eight will be double – decker lifts, while two will be the ultra-high speed lifts. The Guangzhou CTF Financial Center will provide office, hotel and residential space.
The big question here is will the Hitachi lift be able to performs as well as the company claims, because if it does, the spot at the top of the international chart for world’s fastest lift is waiting for it. That is safe to assume because no lift has ever been able to top that speed. The Yokohama Landmark Tower in Japan moves at a speed of 45 km/h, London’s Shard, the tallest building of Western Europe, has lifts with an average speed of 21.6 km/h and even the lifts at the world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, moves at 36km/h.
We’ll just have to wait for 2016 to find out. Check out the video below.
