Of course, for VW's hover car to work in practice, it would have to cost less to run than an ordinary car, and experts question whether that is possible in the foreseeable future. To add a bit of realism in one scene, a discarded can in the roadway rolls away from the car as it passes by. The narrator points out a number of the imaginary car's features, including a joystick controller, auto-pilot, and a collision-avoidance sensor. In the video, Jia's parents take the wheel-shaped hover car out for a spin through Chengdu. As portrayed in the video ( see below), the vehicle would be about two meters in diameter and about 1.5 meters wide. 'We built a one-quarter scale model of the car and used a bit of creative filmmaking to show how it would work,' Loasby says. In their video, Volkswagen designers envision a scenario where magnetic iron rock or ore beneath Chengdu help create the car's levitation alternatively, the minerals could be mined and mixed in with the tarmac. What keeps maglev vehicles from gaining widespread use is the need to set up an infrastructure of electromagnetic rails and roads. Magnets on board and in the track lift the train between eight and 12 millimeters, depending on how much electrical current is used. (Other maglev trains use electromagnetic forces for propulsion without actually lifting the train off the ground.) The Shanghai Maglev Train has been ferrying passengers since 2004 on a 30-kilometer line between Pudong International Airport and the city's outskirts at speeds of up to 430 kilometers per hour. The imaginary car stays aloft with the aid of magnetic levitation, much the way some maglev trains travel along special rails using electromagnetic suspension. 'It was the ultimate in dreaming because a full-scale version of the car doesn't exist.' 'We put a concept together, including a video depicting how it would function,' he adds. Jia sent sketches of a levitating car that could be maneuvered easily in a downtown setting, says Simon Loasby, head of design at Volkswagen Group China. Wang Jia, a student and resident of Chengdu in the country's Sichuan province, chose the latter, envisioning a two-person environmentally-friendly hover car. Participants were able to tinker with designs on a Web site that Volkswagen set up for that purpose, or they could upload their own designs. A year ago, Volkswagen in China launched a marketing campaign called The People's Car Project (PCP), which invited Chinese customers to submit ideas for cars of the future.

Volkswagen hover car concept