Two years after the Tesla CEO crowdsourced the idea for the Hyperloop, his dream of a 'fifth mode' of transportation is quickly and quietly becoming a reality, but what's his endgame?
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Reactions at the time [of Elon Musk's announcement about the Hyperloop] ranged from excitement to skepticism to outright disbelief—Musk was even accused of sabotaging the high-speed rail project for profit, despite his statement that he had no plans to develop the Hyperloop commercially. Musk stepped back, essentially giving the field to the host of students, engineers and entrepreneurs who almost immediately answered the challenge. Musk spent the next two years tweeting support for any opensource Hyperloop developments. He remains close to members of both startups currently in the lead to produce the first working Hyperloop—Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, or HTT, and Hyperloop Technologies Inc., or HTI. But on Jan. 15th of this year, Musk shook up the field when he announced plans to build a Hyperloop test track and hold a contest in summer 2016 at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. The challenge? Create a functioning, half-scale pod. Specs for the test track's tube were released in October, and in November, 318 teams from 162 universities and 16 countries submitted their final pod designs. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx will be the keynote speaker at the first event, a Hyperloop design weekend for the finalists at Texas A&M University on January 13th, 2016.
"Hyperloop." The name still evokes images of Toucan Sam.
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Hyperloop, the transportation technology associated with Elon Musk, could be coming to Europe instead of California:
The Hyperloop could easily become the next big thing after bullet trains. It's a tube-based transportation system, in which pressurized passenger pods are accelerated through reduced-pressure tubes, which enables them to develop speeds as high as 760 miles per hour.
[...] While resolving technical issues was just a matter of time, crossing the red-tape sea in the U.S. forced one of the companies competing to make the Hyperloop a reality — Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, or HTT — to consider building their futuristic transportation pod in Slovakia, at the center of Europe. Just a few weeks ago, HTT CEO Dirk Ahlborn announced that his company has reached an agreement with the Slovakian government. Their plan is to establish the Hyperloop transportation route from Vienna to Bratislava, Slovakia, and from Bratislava to Budapest, Hungary. It normally takes about eight hours to travel from Košice, Slovakia, to Vienna to Budapest. But it's only 43 minutes with the Hyperloop.
[...] In an interview with Vice, HTT Chief Operating Officer Bibop G. Gresta said the initial feasibility study showed that the Hyperloop pod could transport up to 10 million people a year [in California]. The biggest challenges, he said, are politics and regulation.
Previously: The Race to Create Elon Musk's Hyperloop Heats Up
Three Tracks Planned to Test 'Hyperloop' Transportation Idea
MIT Design Wins SpaceX Hyperloop Design Competition
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @03:12AM
As the summary mentions neither Hyperloop-named company [wikipedia.org] has Elon Musk on board, but he is helping both with the test track and competition. I really like this approach.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:05AM
As someone who opened up all the patents for his electric vehicles, perhaps he's just doing something good for people. Perhaps he's one of the few that seems to have 'enough money', rare thing that it is these days.
Perhaps he's the 'anti-Jobs'.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @04:34AM
To be fair, opening up the electrocar patents is also a good long-term business decision. The lack of basic infrastructure (recharge stations) is a main hurdle towards electric car adoption. With many more players able to enter the market using free Tesla patents, the pressure to build the infrastructure grows, the demand grows, more electric cars are sold overall. Tesla gets a smaller piece of a much, much larger pie.
I'm not saying that was Musk's main motivation, but it sure as hell is at least a nice bonus. Even if the profit it is a main motivation, it shows a capability for long-term planning that is tragically absent from most corporations...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @08:04AM
Getting faster, cheaper and safer from A to B?
Sure, a Tesla can get you there pretty fast, but that's going to be very expensive when you get pulled over, and even with auto-steer, hitting a pedestrian or wild animals becomes a high risk at any speed that turns a five hour trip into a sub-one-hour one.
Trains have always been slow, outside of Japan or France. Which is made worse by them needing to follow a track which probably doesn't go straight where you are going (the Hyperloop has this problem also, but at the speeds he is talking about, this becomes much less of an issue).
Planes may be able to go fast once they are in the air, but first you need to get to the airport, then wait in line to be groped by a bunch of minimum-wage tugs. From start to end, a plane may turn a five hour car ride into a five hour trip of which most is spent on the ground.
If we combine the convenience of trains with the speed of planes we might be getting somewhere. Oh sure, if we could combine the convenience of cars with the speed of planes - but that flying car is simply not going to happen anytime soon.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Wednesday December 02 2015, @01:49PM
I am so, so tired of air travel. I do it for work on a pretty consistent basis right now, and it is just a massive hassle. If I could have the speed of planes without that hassle, I would sign up for that real quick. Please, let this technology mature quickly (10 years or less would be fantastic, even if unreasonable on my part).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 02 2015, @03:11PM
high speed rail is for those filthy Europeans!
'Murica flies like an eagle damnit!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2015, @01:59AM
Whereas fruit flies...