The use of small vehicles operating with short headway has many advantages such as operational flexibility and lighter guideway girders because there is only one vehicle on a girder and the spacing between vehicles ensures that beam oscillations produced by one vehicle do not impact the following vehicle. Girder stiffness is chosen to achieve good ride quality when a vehicles travels over it, reducing vehicle mass allows reduction in girder size and cost, which dominates total system cost. For practical designs the girder strength is sufficient to support several vehicles.
The vehicle has four magnet pods, two per bogie, with one bogie at each end of the vehicle. For guide ways with short horizontal or vertical turns, the bogies rotate and tilt with respect to the vehicle body in order for the vehicle to meet the horizontal and vertical turn radii requirements. A secondary suspension can be used to improve ride quality at high speeds.