[usrusr]

My sarcastic take: the problem they are trying to solve is that they are earning a lot of money from contracts so large that so few competitors remain that it becomes somewhat "taking candy from a baby" and that makes them desperately look for something to be proud of.

On the less sarcastic side: unlike the major partners in the former Transrapid project (Siemens and whatever the current incarnation of Thyssen was called at the time), they aren't a public company but some kind of family estate foundation. That type of organization has far more liberty to follow vanity projects than anything pubic could ever dream of.