So I was at an amusement park the other day, and I noticed some of the rides are launched and stopped by frictionless magnetic motors. Does anyone know if car manufacturers have been experimenting with this? Imagine never having to change your pads or wipe off brake dust!!

 

There has been bullet trains that use that technology (maglev) since the mid 90s in japan, so i'm sure they have thought about it.

 

That's how modern dynamometers work. And hybrid cars use inductive braking to put a load on the rotating hub during deceleration to return energy to the batteries. It has a lot of applications, and as more things move to hybrid I'm sure we'll see more of it.

 

^ that's something that's becoming more popular that I've heard a lot about

As far as frictionless brakes, on cars I feel like they'd be heavy, large, and not as reliable to do stop&go constantly like we do in cars, but it would be cool If the technology gets that far

 

Are those just eddy current brake? Because the problem with those are they only provide braking force when there is relative motion between the parts. IE no braking force when stopped.