The Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) team had been working in the Nevada desert for six months to build the first real demonstration of Elon Musks fantastical idea, a system for shooting passengers through steel vacuum tubes at 700 miles per hour.
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Recently Hyperloop One announced it raised had £55m in funding from investors including France’s state-owned railway company, SNCF.
The idea of the hyperloop is to create a new method of transportation that envisions sending people down a tube at high speeds, potentially allowing for high-speed transport from San Francisco to Los Angeles in as little as 30 minutes.
Not just this, the company said that it is also changing its name to Hyperloop One representing its “singular leadership and incredible progress” in developing the world’s first full-scale Hyperloop system.
Although the test was very swift, at about 2 seconds, the company’s founders agreed that it was a lot to take in already.
Earlier this week, a company from Los Angeles called Hyperloop Transportation Technology (HTT) which is led by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) revealed it wants to use magnetic levitation to run the Hyperloop. In about two seconds, the test was over.
The California-based company says a full-scale, full-speed test of its technology could come by the end of this year. It was conducted by a startup named Hyperloop One, and was mainly focused on testing the electromagnetic propulsion technology that will be used to move the Hyperloop’s sled component on the loop’s tracks.
The company’s trio of top executives – co-founder Shervin Pishevar, co-founder and chief technology officer Brogan BamBrogan, and CEO Rob Lloyd – were there to unveil the next stage in their company’s future. If all goes according to plan, sleds will levitate and carry pods in a test later this year.
On its website, Hyperloop Technologies features photos and videos showing off large tubes that would house long pods for either people or cargo.
Alon Levy, a mathematician who writes about mass transit for the blog Pedestrian Observations, said the cost estimates from hyperloop backers do not fully take into account difficulties such as engineering turns at jet speed or even digging tunnels.
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Hyperloop One hopes to be moving cargo as soon as 2019 and predicts it will be ready for passengers by 2021.
