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Why are maglev trains still rare? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

144 comments fedilink hide all child comments

They were invented decades ago.

They have fewer moving parts than wheelbois.

They require less maintenance.

There's obviously some bottleneck in expanding maglev technology, but what is it?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You do save money on them in the long-run. I just assume it takes decades to get all that return on investment back out, thus any entity interested mainly in quarterly profits has little incentive to make the investment, which would be disruptive to their finances in the near-term.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Is that assuming there will not be major repairs?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Fewer major repairs is the way they save you money. Fewer moving parts, less friction, less wear and tear. All the energy savings gets tossed out the window in the interest of going faster, in the ones we've made so far anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There may be fewer moving parts but that does not necessarily mean cheaper/less repairs. Current railway parts (especially wheels) are fairly low tech and easily fixed. What if the cooling of a superconducting magnet fails? That’s expensive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Sure, I didn't say they never require maintenance or anything. Simply that over a long period of time they become cheaper to operate, after taking into account repair and replacement costs.

If you don't take repair and replacement costs into account, they become more expensive. This is probably another reason there are not many of them. Repair is where they save you the money though, due to how infrequently they require it.