5 ms·

China unveils 600km/h maglev train prototype

27 points by Vaslo 7y ago

yorwba 7y ago
Discussion a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20000034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20000034
Kyragem 7y ago
Too bad our government has given up on investing in science otherwise you might have read about an invention coming out of the USA.
hwillis 7y ago
This is a suspended style, unlike the Japanese maglev- it's much more like the old transrapid[1] which used a set of coils underneath the track to pull up the train. There are pros and cons to both. The Japanese maglev uses large unpowered copper coils in the sidewalls[img:2]. They're arranged and interconnected in such a way that they keep the train up and centered. They're quite expensive to build, but more energy efficient. The suspension style can use smaller coils but they need their own power, which is lossy and can limit the length of the track. In both cases the train typically needs its own generator to create all the power. The article says that the plan is to make the cars very light, which is plausible- train cars are way heavier than needed; they weigh several times more (~1000 lbs/person) than the people and luggage they can fit. The strength is important though, as the car needs to pull the rest of the train as well. It may limit the number of passengers per train. They'd have to build entirely new rail for the entire line from Beijing to Shanghai. That would be a very large investment, many times more expensive than just rail. China is preparing for a never-before-seen level of infrastructure and doing anything they can to avoid cars, which would be an ecological and logistical disaster for them. Maglevs are kind of questionable. The use case comes from moving between large cities- plausible in America, but China already has some of the largest airports in the world and less of a middle class to use them. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid 2: https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/maglev-train-test-track-e1487940220972-1200x767.jpg https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ma...
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  A side note, but the poor usage of airports is mostly due to poor reliability caused by the military restrictions on Chinese airspace. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/world/asia/china-beijing-daxing-airport.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/world/asia/china-beijing-... > With roughly 70 percent of airspace controlled by the military (versus 20 percent in the United States), commercial aircraft flying in China are limited to narrow tunnels in the sky. This restricts options for departure and arrival routing, cutting the number of takeoffs and landings that airports can handle. Beijing Capital, for example, was the world’s second-busiest airport based on passenger volume in 2017, but it ranked fifth based on takeoffs and landings, nearly a third fewer than the world leader, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. > The lack of airspace is also a key reason delays are so common in China. Last year, flight delays increased 50 percent, with only 71 percent of flights taking off on time, according to government statistics... When a corridor is blocked by a thunderstorm, for example, Chinese flight controllers often cannot reroute an airplane, because it would have to enter military airspace. That causes planes to sit on the ground or fly holding patterns when in other countries they could land or take off. > The new airport will help by initially opening four, then up to eight, new runways in the suburb of Daxing, 41 miles southwest of Beijing Capital. The number of air corridors available for civilian use stays the same, but the new runways will provide airlines with more ways to gain access to this limited airspace, allowing the Beijing area to facilitate more flights.
  - fspeech 7y ago
    Also China knows how to make trains, but much less about making airplanes. So they are not as motivated to develop domestic flights. Even outside of a protectionist angle, when they need economic stimulus, they routinely go for massive HSR construction. It would have been much less effective with airports/planes.
pg_bot 7y ago
Planes travel 50% faster, have comparatively minimal infrastructure cost, and are more flexible than trains. Build better planes.
- Synaesthesia 7y ago
  It says it’s faster than a plane for Beijing to Shanghai. Planes have boarding times, extra security checks, and produce a lot more greenhouse gases.
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    Anyone who's actually ever compared flying and taking high-speed trains in China will take the train any day over flying between Beijing and Shanghai. The train is faster, cheaper and more comfortable.
    - dewey 7y ago
      Just took the Shanghai Beijing train a few days ago and it was fantastic. Comfortable seats, lots of space, good bathrooms, lots of food and drinks to buy and delivered to your seat if you order with WeChat by scanning a QR code on your seat. Way better than going through an airport - and I love flying.
      - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
        Did the bathrooms have soap and toilet paper? It always amazes me how Chinese facilities can be so great, but then lack these two essentials. Chinese trains are usually BYOS/TP.
        dewey 7y ago
        They did. Sometimes they don’t have it on train stations but there’s either a dispenser outside of the stalls or a store selling tissues right next to the counter.
- 7y ago
beenBoutIT 7y ago
China doesn't make quality things, it pumps out low quality junk that breaks catastrophically and isn't worth fixing. No one in their right mind outside of China would ever voluntary ride in a Chinese vehicle going 100km/h let alone 600 km/h.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  There's generally more variation inside a large group than between groups based on broad categories, like nationality. You can find good people in China. The real question is how common the excellent people are versus the bad actors. Both groups will comprise a minority, and the environment will affect how easy it is for you to find them, and for them to find you.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  Billions of people have ridden on the Chinese high-speed trains. There has been one fatal accident, in 2011. Taking a high-speed train in China is as safe as taking a commercial flight in the United States.
  - nickserv 7y ago
    So not as safe as travelling by train in Japan or Europe then?
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      Europe isn't really safe either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailm...
    - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
      Japan has had no fatal crashes, which is very impressive. Europe has had several. I don't know which is safer - China or Europe. In any case, both are safe enough that safety shouldn't be something you worry about before riding.
- 7y ago
nullwasamistake 7y ago
Haven't we basically given up on maglev? It's too expensive, and advances in regular trains have shown it's quite possible to go 300 mph on (upgraded) old fashioned steel tracks. Every time I see one of these projects in any country it seems like a big publicity stunt. Maglevs are cool, and if you have a few your country is cooler. At least that appears to be the prevailing wisdom. You can see the political underpinnings in the plans, which invariably link the capitol or largest city with somewhere that has a nice airport
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Japan is developing a maglev from Tokyo to Osaka (but first to nogoya) atm. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chūō_Shinkansen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chūō_Shinkansen
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    Japan is only developing it because of a few coincidental factors: - The existing Tokaido Shinkansen is full. Not many high speed rail lines run as intensively as the Tokaido, if any do. - Japan is heavily land-constrained, so even if they built a lower-spec standard Chuo Shinkansen they probably wouldn't save much money either way. - Japan's government loves infrastructure stimulus and promoting homegrown technology, and the Chuo Shinkansen achieves both. Other countries have abandoned maglev because of the relatively low benefit for the increased cost, like Germany and China's initial decision to go with HSR instead of Transrapid.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      China was going to extend the pudong maglev into shanghai city center and all the way to Hangzhou, but Shanghai residents were too afraid of the magnets so the government backed off.
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        That was part of it. Part of it was also compatibility with existing technology. High speed rail trains in China can switch off of high speed rail lines onto classic rail trackage and provide one seat rides to cities not on a high-speed rail line. Maglevs can only run on maglev, necessitating a transfer, and travelers hate transfers. In Japan this compatibility is less important because the classic rail network is narrow-gauged unlike the standard-gauged Shinkansen, so they never really needed to care about this benefit. It was also partially a marketing problem. High speed rail technology is very attractive to other countries because it it can benefit from a larger classic railway network, making it more exportable than maglev. There are also many HSR companies; China was able to use technology from Siemens, Bombardier, and Alstom. In contrast, only Siemens knows how the tech behind the Shanghai maglev works, and they've basically dropped the product due to lack of interest.

27 points by Vaslo 7y ago

Discussion a day ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20000034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20000034

Too bad our government has given up on investing in science otherwise you might have read about an invention coming out of the USA.

hwillis 7y ago

This is a suspended style, unlike the Japanese maglev- it's much more like the old transrapid[1] which used a set of coils underneath the track to pull up the train. There are pros and cons to both. The Japanese maglev uses large unpowered copper coils in the sidewalls[img:2]. They're arranged and interconnected in such a way that they keep the train up and centered. They're quite expensive to build, but more energy efficient. The suspension style can use smaller coils but they need their own power, which is lossy and can limit the length of the track. In both cases the train typically needs its own generator to create all the power. The article says that the plan is to make the cars very light, which is plausible- train cars are way heavier than needed; they weigh several times more (~1000 lbs/person) than the people and luggage they can fit. The strength is important though, as the car needs to pull the rest of the train as well. It may limit the number of passengers per train. They'd have to build entirely new rail for the entire line from Beijing to Shanghai. That would be a very large investment, many times more expensive than just rail. China is preparing for a never-before-seen level of infrastructure and doing anything they can to avoid cars, which would be an ecological and logistical disaster for them. Maglevs are kind of questionable. The use case comes from moving between large cities- plausible in America, but China already has some of the largest airports in the world and less of a middle class to use them. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid 2: https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/maglev-train-test-track-e1487940220972-1200x767.jpg https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ma...

bobthepanda 7y ago
A side note, but the poor usage of airports is mostly due to poor reliability caused by the military restrictions on Chinese airspace. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/world/asia/china-beijing-daxing-airport.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/24/world/asia/china-beijing-... > With roughly 70 percent of airspace controlled by the military (versus 20 percent in the United States), commercial aircraft flying in China are limited to narrow tunnels in the sky. This restricts options for departure and arrival routing, cutting the number of takeoffs and landings that airports can handle. Beijing Capital, for example, was the world’s second-busiest airport based on passenger volume in 2017, but it ranked fifth based on takeoffs and landings, nearly a third fewer than the world leader, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. > The lack of airspace is also a key reason delays are so common in China. Last year, flight delays increased 50 percent, with only 71 percent of flights taking off on time, according to government statistics... When a corridor is blocked by a thunderstorm, for example, Chinese flight controllers often cannot reroute an airplane, because it would have to enter military airspace. That causes planes to sit on the ground or fly holding patterns when in other countries they could land or take off. > The new airport will help by initially opening four, then up to eight, new runways in the suburb of Daxing, 41 miles southwest of Beijing Capital. The number of air corridors available for civilian use stays the same, but the new runways will provide airlines with more ways to gain access to this limited airspace, allowing the Beijing area to facilitate more flights.
- fspeech 7y ago
  Also China knows how to make trains, but much less about making airplanes. So they are not as motivated to develop domestic flights. Even outside of a protectionist angle, when they need economic stimulus, they routinely go for massive HSR construction. It would have been much less effective with airports/planes.

pg_bot 7y ago

Planes travel 50% faster, have comparatively minimal infrastructure cost, and are more flexible than trains. Build better planes.

Synaesthesia 7y ago
It says it’s faster than a plane for Beijing to Shanghai. Planes have boarding times, extra security checks, and produce a lot more greenhouse gases.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  Anyone who's actually ever compared flying and taking high-speed trains in China will take the train any day over flying between Beijing and Shanghai. The train is faster, cheaper and more comfortable.
  - dewey 7y ago
    Just took the Shanghai Beijing train a few days ago and it was fantastic. Comfortable seats, lots of space, good bathrooms, lots of food and drinks to buy and delivered to your seat if you order with WeChat by scanning a QR code on your seat. Way better than going through an airport - and I love flying.
    - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
      Did the bathrooms have soap and toilet paper? It always amazes me how Chinese facilities can be so great, but then lack these two essentials. Chinese trains are usually BYOS/TP.
      - dewey 7y ago
        They did. Sometimes they don’t have it on train stations but there’s either a dispenser outside of the stalls or a store selling tissues right next to the counter.
7y ago

beenBoutIT 7y ago

China doesn't make quality things, it pumps out low quality junk that breaks catastrophically and isn't worth fixing. No one in their right mind outside of China would ever voluntary ride in a Chinese vehicle going 100km/h let alone 600 km/h.

stcredzero 7y ago
There's generally more variation inside a large group than between groups based on broad categories, like nationality. You can find good people in China. The real question is how common the excellent people are versus the bad actors. Both groups will comprise a minority, and the environment will affect how easy it is for you to find them, and for them to find you.
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
Billions of people have ridden on the Chinese high-speed trains. There has been one fatal accident, in 2011. Taking a high-speed train in China is as safe as taking a commercial flight in the United States.
- nickserv 7y ago
  So not as safe as travelling by train in Japan or Europe then?
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    Europe isn't really safe either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailm...
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    Japan has had no fatal crashes, which is very impressive. Europe has had several. I don't know which is safer - China or Europe. In any case, both are safe enough that safety shouldn't be something you worry about before riding.
7y ago

nullwasamistake 7y ago

Haven't we basically given up on maglev? It's too expensive, and advances in regular trains have shown it's quite possible to go 300 mph on (upgraded) old fashioned steel tracks. Every time I see one of these projects in any country it seems like a big publicity stunt. Maglevs are cool, and if you have a few your country is cooler. At least that appears to be the prevailing wisdom. You can see the political underpinnings in the plans, which invariably link the capitol or largest city with somewhere that has a nice airport

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Japan is developing a maglev from Tokyo to Osaka (but first to nogoya) atm. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chūō_Shinkansen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chūō_Shinkansen
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Japan is only developing it because of a few coincidental factors: - The existing Tokaido Shinkansen is full. Not many high speed rail lines run as intensively as the Tokaido, if any do. - Japan is heavily land-constrained, so even if they built a lower-spec standard Chuo Shinkansen they probably wouldn't save much money either way. - Japan's government loves infrastructure stimulus and promoting homegrown technology, and the Chuo Shinkansen achieves both. Other countries have abandoned maglev because of the relatively low benefit for the increased cost, like Germany and China's initial decision to go with HSR instead of Transrapid.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    China was going to extend the pudong maglev into shanghai city center and all the way to Hangzhou, but Shanghai residents were too afraid of the magnets so the government backed off.
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      That was part of it. Part of it was also compatibility with existing technology. High speed rail trains in China can switch off of high speed rail lines onto classic rail trackage and provide one seat rides to cities not on a high-speed rail line. Maglevs can only run on maglev, necessitating a transfer, and travelers hate transfers. In Japan this compatibility is less important because the classic rail network is narrow-gauged unlike the standard-gauged Shinkansen, so they never really needed to care about this benefit. It was also partially a marketing problem. High speed rail technology is very attractive to other countries because it it can benefit from a larger classic railway network, making it more exportable than maglev. There are also many HSR companies; China was able to use technology from Siemens, Bombardier, and Alstom. In contrast, only Siemens knows how the tech behind the Shanghai maglev works, and they've basically dropped the product due to lack of interest.