Elon Musk has big plans for next year's Hyperloop competition, with the SpaceX founder promising a significantly more challenging course for startups looking to commercialize the technology. The competition was announced back in 2015, a way for SpaceX to support student teams developing Hyperloop technologies and, specifically, the pods capable of traveling at high speed through the tunnels.
Virgin Hyperloop One has revealed that a feasibility study on a hyperloop route spanning from Kansas City to St Louis has produced favorable results. The examination was performed by Black & Veatch, which created an independent report analyzing a possible future route next to the I-70 highway through Missouri.
Hyperloop's transportation promises may have focused on bussing passengers until now, but two big players are expecting the high speed pod-in-a-pipe technology to have an even bigger impact on cargo transportation. Virgin Hyperloop One and logistics firm DP World have teamed up to create DP World Cargospeed, a new supply system for high-priority shipments.
Elon Musk may have his Boring ambitions, but others are eying a different solution to the transportation problem. Instead of simply building high-speed highways underground, hyperloops instead try to reduce vehicular congestion and travel time with fast-moving capsules. HyperloopTT one of the two biggest hyperloop companies has just proudly announced the arrival of its first tubes in France where it will be constructing and conducting its first real-world test of this nearly sonic speed form of transportation.
When Elon Musk first unveiled The Boring Company, its plan was to create a network of underground tunnels used to transport vehicles at high speeds to help bypass and eliminate traffic. Now the founder has come out with an updated vision, saying that The Boring Company's tunnels will first focus on transporting pedestrians and cyclists first, essentially serving as a new form of mass transit, before it begins moving personal vehicles.
Last summer, we heard that Elon Musk and The Boring Company received "verbal" approval to begin preliminary work on a Hyperloop tunnel between Washington DC and New York. Verbal approval, however, doesn't really mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but today The Boring Company has something a little more tangible to show us. The local government in Washington DC has given Musk and The Boring Company an early permit to begin some excavation work in an abandoned lot in the city's NoMa neighborhood.
If Hyperloop is to succeed as a transportation option, it needs to be more than just a fast train carriage in a tube: it needs to fit seamlessly into an overall travel ecosystem. That's just what Virgin Hyperloop One is aiming to show off at CES 2018 today, bringing along not only its first-generation pod but showcasing an app that it says could preview how the high-speed transportation might fit in with other transit options.
Hyperloop One, now called Virgin Hyperloop One, has named Richard Branson as its new Chairman, this announcement following an investment into the company by Branson's Virgin Group back in October. In addition to revealing Branson's new role in the company, Virgin Hyperloop One has announced a new series of funding and details about its latest round of testing, during which the company says its achieved "historic test speeds."
There are some big changes going on with Hyperloop One today. Hyperloop and Virgin have announced a new partnership that will see Virgin Group founder Richard Branson joining Hyperloop One's board. Not only that, but a new investment from Branson and Virgin Group are bringing about a bit of a name change at the offices of Hyperloop.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has posted an image and a video to Instagram talking about the recent test that was conducted of the Hyperloop pusher pod. Musk says that the test involved sending the pusher pod alone down the tube just to see what it would do. That pusher pod wasn't pushing any student pods in this test.
Elon Musk may not have set out to build a Hyperloop, but it looks like the allure of putting those Boring Company digging machines to work is too much for the ambitious billionaire. Having watched - interested, but maintaining that he was too busy with SpaceX and Tesla to get involved himself - from the sidelines as startups like Hyperloop One tackled with the technical and regulatory issues around putting humans in bullet-like pods and blasting them at high speed through underground tunnels, it now seems he can't resist giving it a go himself.
A year ago, Hyperloop One successfully completed its first phase of testing. Now, 15 months later, the company has announced the completion of Phase 2, with plenty of new Hyperloop records being set in this second round of testing. In fact, the results from Phase 2 vastly exceed the results from Phase 1 in many cases.