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MOAPA, Nevada – Hyperloop technology, which promises to transport people and goods at speeds of up to 600 miles an hour, has long seemed too good to be true. But one company says it took a big step towards commercialization by putting two of its employees through a test system.
Virgin Hyperloop became the first company to perform a human test of the technology on Sunday at its 500-meter test track in the desert north of Las Vegas. The two volunteers, dressed in casual street clothes, were whipped into a pod that was levitated by magnets inside a vacuum tube at 107 mph in 6.25 seconds.
The pilots were seated in molded seats covered in white vegan leather, housed inside the housing completely covered in white carbon fiber.
While the G-forces on the nacelle were three times that of an airplane, “it was much smoother than I expected,” said Sara Luchian, 37, one of the pilots. and Director of the Company’s Passenger Experience. And unlike an airplane, there weren’t any lateral forces that would have caused the nacelle to sway, she said.
“It wasn’t that different than accelerating in a sports car,” said Josh Giegel, 35, company co-founder and other volunteer driver.
“This is a historic milestone,” said Jay Walder, chief executive of the company, of 20 months of planning. “I don’t think you can overstate it. It’s a good time. I have no doubt this will change the world. “
It is still not known if this becomes a giant leap for humanity.
Virgin’s test could be as symbolically important as it is crucial to the technology’s ultimate success. As the pod moved at a much slower speed than what supporters of hyperloops claim the technology is capable of, company officials described it as a safety milestone.
“The # 1 question I get from investors is, ‘Is it safe enough to ride? Mr. Giegel said. “We are ordinary people, we are not astronauts. This shows that it is safe, and observers can report this to their investors and interested municipalities.
The test also gives a sense of reality to an otherwise abstract sci-fi-like construction. “You can show the most elegant diagram, but at the end of the day, what’s important is that people will overlap it?” This is an example of a picture that is worth a thousand words, ”Ms. Luchian said.
The modern concept of hyperloop was first described in 2012 by Elon Musk, the top executive of SpaceX and Tesla. He pitched the idea to anyone who wanted to exploit it, and neither he nor his companies are working on hyperloops.
Virgin Hyperloop, which counts Richard Branson’s Virgin Group as a minority investor, is one of several companies looking to commercialize the technology, which they hope will eventually move passengers between cities and freight to and from the ports.
If it works as advertised, the travel time could be significantly reduced – a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco could, for example, take less than an hour.
Mr. Walder has extensive knowledge of transportation systems, having served as the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York and of Transport for London. Mr. Walder said hyperloop technology could be the first new transit system in a century.
“The US interstate highway system, which began in 1956, cannot be the end of our imagination when it comes to how we get around,” he said. With hyperloop, “we can have a fundamentally different transportation system.”
Unlike trains, which operate on fixed schedules, hyperloop pods are said to function more like smart elevators. Artificial intelligence would adjust destinations, the number of pods that travel in a convoy, and departure times based on demand.
Many experts are skeptical that the technology will live up to its big promises or be economically viable.
A truck hitting the tube could shut down the system, said Carlo Van de Weijer, managing director of the Dutch Institute for AI Systems in Eindhoven. As the system ages, it would require expensive maintenance. The Hyperloops also might not be able to carry as many people or cargo as its supporters claim, as individual pods would have to slow down to enter the tracks.
“Every breakthrough starts with a strange idea,” said Dr Van de Weijer. “But not all weird ideas are a breakthrough.”
Like high-speed rail systems, hyperloop companies will have to acquire expensive rights of way, said Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The tubes that carry the hyperloop pods will need to be very straight for high speed travel and the turns will need to be very wide. Once the routes are defined, acquiring all the necessary plots of land could become a nightmare. “If a route has been chosen, there are no alternatives,” Mr. Matute said. “Airlines don’t have this problem.”
Still, some government officials and hyperloop entrepreneurs are determined to pursue the technology. Virgin Hyperloop, which has doubled its workforce to 300 in the past two years and has raised more than $ 400 million, has chosen West Virginia as the site for a certification center and a six-mile test track.
He has several projects in the planning stages: a route between Pune and Mumbai in India; another between Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia; and one connecting Chicago, Columbus, Ohio and Pittsburgh.
“We are very positive and very intrigued by the possibilities of hyperloop,” said Thea Ewing, director of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.
The council estimates that over 30 years, a hyperloop connecting these cities would displace 1.9 billion car and truck trips, reduce carbon emissions by 2.4 million tonnes and generate $ 300 billion in economic benefits.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a company based in Los Angeles and Dubai, has built a 320-meter test track in Toulouse, France, and is designing a 1,000-meter test track for Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. It also formed a partnership with a container operator in the Port of Hamburg to design a freight transport system.
The ability to move people safely at this stage of the technology’s development isn’t that important, said company chief executive Andres de Leon. “We are testing the program from an engineer’s point of view, not from a marketer’s point of view.”
In the Netherlands, Hardt, a hyperloop company with 35 employees, built a 30-meter track that allows the company to test its levitation, propulsion and lane change technologies. The company has teamed up with Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to study the feasibility of a hyperloop linking the main airports in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium and Great Britain.
But it is the movement of goods that Hardt develops first. “It’s less risky and it’s easier for stakeholders if we don’t focus on passengers,” said the company’s commercial director, Mars Gueuze. “It’s easier to take baby steps.”
Two other companies, TransPod in Toronto and Zeleros in Valencia, Spain, are also working on the development of hyperloop systems.
Hyperloop companies were encouraged by the government’s findings that the technology is feasible. In 2019, the US Department of Transportation commissioned the Federal Railroad Administration to develop standards and regulations for hyperloops.
In Europe, several hyperloop companies have created a technical committee to develop standards which they hope will be adopted by the European Union.
After Mr. Giegel and Ms. Luchian entered the capsule, it was pushed into a decompression chamber while waiting for a vacuum to be created. At this point, the gate valve opened and the capsule entered the tube, ready for testing.
Virgin’s successful human tests could give true believers in the technology a psychological boost. Company executives believe the system will be commercialized by the end of the decade.
“This technology could be the transition into the future that we all want,” said Mr. Giegel. “Today we have gone from childhood to adolescence.”
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