United States firm Hyperloop One said that it had completed its first public test of the system – which travels through low pressure tubes – at 100mph on Wednesday.
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Today’s test lasted barely two seconds. Both companies still need to prove they can produce systems that would actually work at scale, and even when they’ve achieved that, they’ll still need to find the funds to build such a massive infrastructure project.
“We’re not trying to optimize the transportation experience”, said Hyperloop One co-founder Brogan BamBrogan. According to a Gizmodo report, Mr. Ingels “will give some much-needed design direction for how Hyperloop One’s projects might start to integrate with the cities they’re meant to serve”.
“Technology development testing can be a tricky beast”, he said.
BamBrogan worked at private rocket company SpaceX with technology innovator Elon Musk, who determined he was too busy to develop Hyperloop with SpaceX and electric auto manufacturer Tesla already on his plate.
The aptly named Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) just demoed its system on Wednesday, and it worked.
A large aluminum sled shot along a track reaching a maximum speed of 100 miles per hour and accelerating with a g-force of 2.4, which pushed it from zero to 60 miles per hour in 1.1 seconds. “Techniques that allow us to create a flawless production level”, he said. HTT also plans on building a Hyperloop (with a different propulsion system). That’s what Hyperloop Technologies (now Hyperloop One) did.
Because Hyperloop could hypothetically be built underwater, ports could be built a distance offshore instead of on a shoreline. Systra said today it intends to use Hyperloop One’s design in future projects in Russian Federation and the Middle East.
Over the past year, we saw the idea of a hyperloop grow with the support from investors as well as fans.
Hyperloop One was founded in 2014 by venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, an early investor in Uber, and BamBrogan, a former top SpaceX engineer who sports a handlebar mustache. The semi-privatized French national railway, SNCF, is increasing its stake in Hyperloop One as part of an $80 million funding round also announced yesterday.
BamBrogan says that the team hopes to increase the amount of stators (the electrically charged magnets that propel the sled) to improve the speed of the test unit and build a full-scale, quarter-mile-long track by the end of 2016.
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While the technology took a major leap forward today, it was nearly overshadowed by the interest from existing transportation companies which moved to more closely align themselves with Hyperloop One.
