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Levitating Cars In China: Video Shows Cars Suddenly Leaping Into The Air At Intersection

By Treva Bowdoin
Published on: 13:08 PST, Nov 29, 2015

Are levitating cars really flying down the roads in China? CCTV footage of an intersection in Xingtai, China, shows an eerie scene that looks like something out of a Harry Potter movie — cars suddenly leap into the air like they’ve just been hit by a jolt of magic from a wizard’s wand. The video mystified most of the internet for a while, but some skeptical web sleuths finally found an explanation for how the levitating cars managed to leave the ground.

The video of the levitating cars shows a white van rapidly approaching an intersection. Right before the vehicle speeds over the crosswalk markings, it suddenly bounces up in the air. The rear-end of the van goes up first, and it almost looks like an unseen force pulls the vehicle backwards while it’s in the air. The van’s violent levitating seems to set off a chain reaction — another white van in the lane next to it also leaves the ground and starts thrashing around.

The first van actually loses a wheel and falls on its side, colliding with the second van on its way down. A third car on the right side of the screen can also be seen “levitating” as witnesses flee the strange scene.

Internet conspiracy theorists have come up with some pretty bizarre theories about the so-called “levitating cars” in the viral video.

“Did you see The Levitating car in China?” Rick Party wrote on Facebook. “Magnetic field or New Red Light mechanism, either way, weird!”

“Very bizarre video. I cannot go either way of this one. I could see cloaking technology, or beam weapons, even particle beam application. Even a time warp,” Mark E. Painter speculated.

Others jokingly suggested that Magneto, the Ministry of Magic, or aliens were responsible for the levitating cars.

However, fans of The X Files shouldn’t expect the revival of the FOX series to tackle the topic of levitating cars in the near future. As it turns out, the mystery isn’t worthy of Mulder and Scully’s attention — the explanation for the car’s bizarre bouncing and thrashing is actually quite simple.

According to the Telegraph, the cars that you see “levitating” are actually running into a cable. If you look at the right side of the screen, you’ll see a street sweeper. Police discovered that a metal cable had become tangled up in the sweeper’s brushes. The sweeper pulled the cable taut when it started moving forward, and the cars driving the other direction simply ran into the cable.

The explanation isn’t very exciting, so those want to believe simply aren’t buying it.

“I just saw an explanation for this (interesting that mainstream theories are ‘explanations,’ and non-mainstream explanations are ‘theories,’ but I suppose that’s a separate conversation),” Sean Alden Fitzgerald commented. “Uh…honestly, hard for me to buy what’s being said.”

The levitating cars video even stumped Crimson Peak director Guillermo del Toro.

Weirdly enough, this isn’t the first time a video of a levitating car in China has captivated the internet. According to Snopes, a viral video purporting to show a very bizarre floating car took the web by storm in 2012. It featured a futuristic circular vehicle seemingly levitating over the ground, and the video was accompanied by a description saying that the prototype was produced by Volkswagen in Chengdu, China. The description claimed that the vehicle was “able to levitate due to the abundance of minerals in Chengdu that act as electromagnetic roads.”

The “hover car” was an idea that was submitted for Volkswagen’s 2011 “People’s Car Project.” Chinese internet users were challenged to share their ideas for cars of the future with the company, and three concepts were chosen to be “further developed by Volkswagen.” However, the company hasn’t actually produced a levitating car — Volkswagen simply produced the digitally-manipulated video below as a reward for the submitter of the hover car idea. The company wanted her to see what her creation would look like in action.

Luckily for those who are hoping to someday glide over the road in wheel-free rides, the levitating cars of the future will probably be more like the Volkswagen concept and less like the bucking vans in the top video.

[Image via NewsVidsAZ/Youtube]

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