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During the last hundred years we have made great advances in our transportation technologies. Inventions such as the train, bus and airplane have allowed us the freedom to travel and explore. Unfortunately we are still using primitive and environmentally harmful petroluem fuels to propel our personal and public transport services. Hybrid (gas-electric) cars are fueled by gasoline and uses a battery and motor to improve efficiency by as much as 50 percent. An electric car is powered exclusively by electricity. Electric cars produce no tailpipe emissions, reduce our dependency on oil, and are cheaper to operate. The Shanghai Maglev Train is the first commercial high-speed maglev line in the world. During a test run on 12 November 2006, a maglev vehicle achieved a Chinese record speed of 501 km/h (311 mph).
Maglev is short for magnetic levitation, implies that these trains float over a guideway using the basic principles of magnets, replacing steel wheel and track trains. The properties of magnets, in which opposite poles attract and like poles repel each other is the basic principle behind electromagnetic propulsion. Electromagnets are similar to other magnets in that they attract metal objects, but the magnetic pull is temporary. The difference between a maglev train and a conventional train is that maglev trains do not have a conventional engine. The engine for maglev trains do not use fossil fuels, instead the magnetic field created by the electrified coils in the guideway walls and the track combine to propel the train.
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