The incremental detection of the vehicle position of a magnetic levitation vehicle, particularly having an elongate stator motor, can occur with at least one coded measuring strip which extends in the direction of travel with a fixed positional assignment to the stator winding and can occur with a sensor system disposed on the vehicle. The sensor system comprises a plurality of sensors disposed at a distance in the direction of travel for detecting the coding. For reliably identifying the relative and the absolute vehicle position given high resolution of the measured signals, the measuring strip, in addition to a pole position coding, also exhibits a slot coding for determining the vehicle location and the sensors arranged independently of the drive system comprise measuring windings for the pole position decoding and measuring windings for the slot decoding. The measuring windings for the pole position decoding are disposed at a different angle relative to the measuring strip than are the measuring windings for the slot decoding.