The technology to be tested at the site is the Propulsion Open Air Test or POAT.
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A company seeking to bring Elon Musk’s hyperloop transportation concept into reality plans to begin work this month on a small test site in North Las Vegas. The company said it has raised $37 million from investors and expects to obtain $80 million more in bond financing. Hyperloop Technologies plans to finish its first test track by late 2016 or early 2017 to have its system ready for commercial use by 2020.
The value of the so-referred to as Propulsion Open Air Test wasn’t disclosed. Elon Musk, CEO of companies like Tesla and SpaceX, first came up with the idea back in 2013, encouraging others to pursue the idea because he’s already pretty busy running a bunch of companies.
Capsules would float on a thin cushion of air and draw on magnetic attraction and solar power to zoom through a almost airless tube.
Hyperloop is a transportation system in which a full-length tube is built between destinations, with a controlled environment inside the tube allowing people or cargo to travel at extremely fast speeds. Meanwhile, a rival (but similarly named) firm Hyperloop Transport Technologies is working on a crowdsourced model, with its engineers and designers exchanging their time for equity in the company.
Musk isn’t directly involved in the Hyperloop Technologies program, project spokeswoman Meredith Kendall said Tuesday.
Musk didn’t immediately respond to messages left with Tesla Motors officials.
He is backing an engineering competition aimed at developing a hyperloop prototype.
And, prior to that, Musk announced that he was planning to build a track of his own in Texas for companies and student teams to test out their transport pods.
News of the development is a boon for North Las Vegas, a city of about 220,000 that experienced rapid growth in the early 2000s before teetering on the edge of insolvency when the recession hit.
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Lee and Nevada officers additionally hope to appeal to electrical automotive firm Faraday Future, which is predicted to announce quickly whether or not it should put a $ 1 billion manufacturing unit and an estimated 4,500 jobs in California, Georgia, Louisiana or Nevada.
