Maglev Elevators by 2008?

An anonymous reader writes "CNN is reporting that the first magnetic levitation elevators could hit the market as soon as 2008. The Toshiba Elevator and Building Systems Corporation has stated that the same technology used to develop high speed trains will soon be available in their elevators. From the article: 'The maglev elevators will be quieter and more comfortable and will travel 300 meters (984 feet) per minute -- not as fast as the company's conventional lifts that can move up to 1,010 meters (3,314 feet) a minute, Toshiba said.'"

Comments

Oh wowee

[Concern]

So, it's:

1. Slower
   
2. More complex
   
3. Dangerous failure mode
   
4. Uses lots of electricity
   
5. Difficult to maintain (no elevator technicians know maglev)
   
6. Dare I speculate... more expensive?
   

But at least I get the thing I've always really wanted in a new elevator:

More "comfortable."

Wow, this baby's got legs.

Re:Oh wowee

[T3hFish]

Yes... but it is the latest tech! Since when did people start demanding that new products are better than older versions of the same product?

Re:Oh wowee

[manthrax3]

I see the main advantage being elevators that can do more than simply go up and down.

Re:Oh wowee

[Grishnakh]

This really isn't that hard.

In addition to induction-based brakes, you could have simple friction brakes. It would be sorta like brake drums on cars, except linear instead of circular; brake shoes would pop out in an emergency, applying the friction material to steel beams next to the elevator. During normal operation, the shoes would be held back using electromagnets; when the power fails, the electromagnets would deactivate, causing the brakes to activate.

This is the same way that fire doors in places like hospitals and other commercial buildings work. They're held open with electromagnets, and when the power fails, they close.

Re:Oh wowee

[LoRdTAW]

Sealing the shaft for a vacuum would defeat the maintenece free part. Every door would have to have a seal which would definatly be high maintenence. Perhaps a blower or fan of some sort to help relieve the piston effect.

Re:Oh wowee

[Anonymous Coward]

How about pressurizing the elevator car, much like an airplane?

The preassure is just going to change at a much faster (painfull) way when the doors open.

The problem has nothing to do with the speed of the elevator itself, but with how fast your ears can adjust between the different preassure levels at different heights.

If adjusting takes two minutes at a certain height difference, a preassured elevator could do it in halv a minute no problem - but then you would have to wait a minute and a half for the preassure inside the elevator to be lowered before opening the door. So, preassuring the elevator is basically useless as it will take the same amount of time anyway.

Unless you don't open the door, but go back down immidiately - or the top floor is preassured (could be a solution for a tourist view tower thing, where the other floors aren't accessible from the elevator).

A big So What...

[greginnj]

I read TFA, and as GP writes, it's slower than current designs. But... "more comfortable". When's the last time you took an elevator ride and said, "damn, this is really uncomfortable!" How is the comfort issue better solved by maglev than by installing benches or heaters or AC or whatever in the current elevators?

What problem is this new design solving? Or is it just the Tamagochi of commercial architecture -- cuteness is its only market differentiator?

Re:safety?

[zippthorne]

Do you seriously think the cable is all that separates you from sliding down a the elevator shaft o' doom?

You guys are too full of fear

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why everyone's so afraid of being in one of these when the power goes out. If I were designing it, obviously I'd put in some mechanical brakes that are only kept retracted by the application of power. A power loss would fail to hold back the brakes, allowing them to pop out to their default no-power position of immobilizing the elevator.

Seems so obvious...what, are all the infantile Digg posters coming over here now?

Re:You guys are too full of fear

[Goaway]

You seriously never noticed before now that the one thing Slashdotters fear more than anything is new technology?

Your Imagination Limits Your Reality

[Doomedsnowball]

Sometimes I think /. readers have little imagination. Magnetic applications in everyday life are entirely different from the maglev application. From field restricted mag-pulses, to rails to reduce friction and noise (I know that would make me more comfortable), it is and always has been possible to upgrade a horribly old technology. Pully anyone? So instead of lamenting about reinventing the wheel, you should try and discover if your imagination can accurately describe *HOW* the maglev will be implemented.

Benefits of having no cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Benefits of having no cable that I can see are:

* No limit on the height of the elevator.
Currently, elevators are limited in the number of floors they can service, because the cables
can only be so long. No such problem with these.

* Circular route using two shafts.
Elevator goes up to the top. Elevator goes across horizontally to adjacent shaft. Elevator comes down.
Result: an "up shaft" and a "down shaft". And multiple cabins could be in a single shaft at the same time.
That's a massive benefit for tall buildings.

* No "machine room" required at the top of the shaft. Nice for buildings that want to make use of their
roof space without having machine shacks on them. I've always wondered why there aren't more roof gardens
around; this removes one objection.

I wonder if they use "regenerative braking" to recover power on the descent.

Re:Benefits of having no cable

[earthbound kid]

You can't put two elevators into the same shaft, because you never know when some idiot on the third floor is going to keep holding the door open to talk to his girlfriend. Meanwhile, the person on the 42nd floor wants to go down, but the other elevator is stuck waiting on the second under Mr. Talksalot on 3.

Have a vacuum in the shaft???

[Viol8]

You've been reading too many sci-fi books my friend. Just a couple of minor
points you might want to consider:

- The ability to keep a large lift shaft in vacuum in the first place.
- The stresses on the building resulting from doing so.
- The complex airlocks required instead of standard lift doors.
- The problem of an air leak in the lift.
- Provision of an emergency air supply for passengers.
- Emergency evacuation procedure issues.
- Removal of heat from the lift.
- Maintenance issues (will the maintenance guys have to wear space suits??)

And probably lots of other little details I haven't even thought of. It might
sound cool when in a Philip K Dick novel but in the real world its a bloody
stupid idea.

Re:Counterweight!?

[vidarh]

See posts elsewhere about multiple elevator per shaft. IF the safety issue can be addressed well enough, cable free elevators could revolutionise urban development. Today building extremely high skyscrapers isn't seen as practical or worthwhile except in extremely high density/high land cost areas.

This is due in part to the extreme overhead of elevators once buildings get tall enough, because you keep having to add more shafts to get people to the top fast enough, and end up with crappy solutions like rigidly partitioning a shaft and have several sets of elevators combined with a few express elevators that only go to certain floors.

Combine a cable less maglev system, multiple shafts possibly with the ability to transfer elevators between shafts at specific points, and an reasonably intelligent scheduling system and you'd be able to increase the capacity of each shafts many times over.

Just halving the number of elevator shafts required per 20 floors of building added would have a tremendous impact on the economic viability of skyscrapers by freeing up huge amounts of floor space.