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10 Coolest New Methods of Transportation

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Ten wild machines are rewriting what “getting there” even means.

From a maglev train that floats above its guideway at 603 km/h to a wingsuit rider with twin jet engines strapped to his back, the transportation ideas circulating in 2019 aren’t concept sketches anymore — most are flying, floating, or driving in real tests. This roundup breaks down the standout entries: an emotionally-aware electric concept car, a submersible convertible, a Japanese speed-record holder, and a handful of machines built to solve the last mile, the daily commute, and the open-water dive alike.

• Central Japan Railway’s SCMAGLEV L0 Series set a world rail speed record at 603 km/h (375 mph), floating 10 mm above its guideway on superconducting magnets.
• Germany’s Lilium Jet, an all-electric five-seat eVTOL aircraft, is targeting speeds up to 186 mph and a 186-mile range for urban air mobility.
• Jetman’s carbon-fiber rocket wingsuit, powered by twin jet engines, reaches speeds up to 300 km/h at 4,000 feet.

The Speed Frontier: Maglev and Hyperloop

Nothing on rails or in tubes moves faster right now than Central Japan Railway’s SCMAGLEV L0 Series. The train has no wheels touching a track in the traditional sense — superconducting magnets lift it 10 mm above the guideway and propel it to 603 km/h, a figure that stands as the fastest a train has ever run on record. That kind of clearance and speed is only possible because magnetic levitation removes the friction that caps conventional high-speed rail.

Virgin Hyperloop One is chasing an even bigger number with a fundamentally different approach: strip the air out of a sealed tube and let a levitating pod run through near-vacuum conditions. The pitch is 700-plus mph passenger and cargo travel, a jump that would put a hyperloop pod in the same speed conversation as a commercial jet, minus the airport. For a deeper technical breakdown of how the tube-and-pod system is actually engineered, the explainer at Hyperloop Explained | The B1M lays out the physics behind the vacuum-tube concept in more detail.

Reinventing the Car: Honda’s NeuV and Rinspeed’s sQuba

Honda’s NeuV concept flips the usual autonomous-vehicle pitch. Instead of just selling self-driving convenience, the electric concept car runs on HANA — Honda’s Automated Network Assistant — which is built to read the driver’s emotional state and adjust accordingly. It’s less “hands off the wheel” and more “car that notices you’re stressed.”

Rinspeed’s sQuba takes the opposite extreme: it’s a zero-emission, open-top electric convertible that can drive straight into a lake and keep going. Powered by twin propellers and Seabob water jets, the sQuba submerges up to 10 meters (33 feet) below the surface. It’s an amphibious update on an idea James Bond made famous decades ago, except this one runs clean.

603 km/h, floating 10 mm above the guideway — no wheels, no friction, no rival on rails.

Personal Flight and Micro-Mobility

Germany’s Lilium Jet is built for the gap between a car and a helicopter: an all-electric five-seater eVTOL aircraft aiming for 186 mph and a 186-mile range, designed specifically for short-hop urban air mobility rather than long-haul flight. Jetman’s approach is far more personal — a carbon-fiber wingsuit rigged with twin jet engines that pushes a solo flyer to 300 km/h at 4,000 feet, no cabin, no wings beyond what’s strapped to the body. Readers who want to see the jet-suit concept in a live demo setting can check out the Cisco LIVE Europe jet suit flight and talk by Richard Browning.

On the ground, the Lopifit takes micro-mobility somewhere odd but effective: an electric walking bike that puts a treadmill belt under the rider’s feet, driven by a 350W Samsung lithium-ion motor good for a 34-mile range. It’s a stand-up commute machine rather than a sit-and-pedal one, aimed at the same short-distance niche that’s already made e-bikes and scooters common sights in cities — a niche covered in more depth in the breakdown of this e-bike built to handle bike trails like a motorcycle.

What ties all seven together isn’t one technology but one shared target: cut the time and emissions out of getting somewhere, whether that somewhere is across town, across a lake, or 4,000 feet in the air. The SCMAGLEV L0 already holds the speed record; Virgin Hyperloop One and Lilium are still chasing theirs on the test track and in flight trials, respectively — and both have public demonstration runs on the calendar that will decide how much of this actually reaches paying passengers next.