There’s an added benefit to going with permanent magnet tracks and placing the superconductor on the cars. As superconducting technology improves you can iterate on the cars much easier than you can rebuild the whole track network. This design approach is better at avoiding lock-in into obsolete technology.
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Storage is still a problem on the car. That's what I mean. Of course we won't be given details. I was just wondering how they addressed this issue which of course won't be revealed. I'm not saying anything is better or worse.
Wonder how much of that USA is actually Chinese Americans.
It’s actually not *that* hard a problem from an engineering standpoint. Liquid nitrogen storage is not something that needs groundbreaking innovation. Very aggressive passive insulation methods should help reduce the need for active refrigeration. Furthermore, because the amount of cooling and insulation you need scales as a ratio of the amount of superconducting material you’re using, if the field strength to mass ratio of the superconducting material is very high you may not need to cool that much material. From an energy budget standpoint this is more or less about trading the mechanical energy requirements needed to overcome the friction of tracks for the thermal energy requirement needed to cool the magnets.
Oh I get all this. I'm thinking from maintenance and damages. Leaks etc.
Right, but those are ultimately engineering redundancy and tolerance questions. They’ll take time and practical experience to discover and resolve, which is why I’m not bullish on near term commercialization, but these sorts of issues existed for normal rail based tech too. We just shrug at them today because the technology is mature and not so novel anymore.
.You apparently did not watch the video to the end. What does the logo say?
Besides, at the every beginning, it says that this is a "engineering prototype" ready for road testing, not merely lab experiment. The car in the video is 12 tonnes in full size.
Also, remember that Southwest Jiaotong (交通) University is not just any university. Together with Beijing Jiaotong and Shanghai Jiaotong they are essentially part of China Railway (before it became a company).
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I stand corrected. This prototype is indeed a joint effort with CRRC but still it’s led by SW Jiaotong, whereas the more conservative design is CRRC’s own project.
But isn't using Permanent magnet on the tracks more susceptible to interfere with the surroundings?
I think using EM tracks was safer. (The engineers know better but I was thinking about the viability for expansion).
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When you add up the Western alliance of US + EU + India + Canada + UK + Israel then over 50% of AI researchers still come from the West. This is why alliances are important and China needs to improve its foreign relations, as well as up its overall game.