This is what traveling on Elon Musk’s 700 mph Hyperloop could look like and will it be in Mexico

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It’s anyone’s guess how long it will take for Elon Musk’s Hyperloop dream of an ultra-high-speed transit system to become reality. But with SpaceX’s annual Hyperloop Pod Competition taking place on Sunday, July 21st — where teams from colleges and universities around the world compete with their prototypes of high-speed transportation pods — at least one group of designers is already offering a conceptual look at what the high-speed system could eventually look like.

A group from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands shared its vision for Hyperloop pods, called Atlas 02, and stations that could one day be used to transport passengers long distances at ultra-high speeds, with a panoramic concept video showing what the passenger experience would look like.

Take a look.

Concept images show a station with arriving and departing pods…

H/O: Delft hyperloop prototype station 190716

Source: Delft University / INDG / AltSpace

…as well as the inside of an eventual Hyperloop pod, including stylish seats in a glass-topped pod complete with digital screens displaying the date and weather on what the team envisions would be a 30-minute ride between Amsterdam and Paris (a trip that currently takes over three hours via train).

H/O: Delft hyperloop interior 190716

Source: Delft University / INDG / AltSpace

H/O: Delft University hyperloop pod social interior 190717

Source: Delft University / INDG / AltSpace

The pods through move through tubes at hundreds of miles per hours.  

H/O: Delft University hyperloop pod tube 190717

Source: Delft University / INDG / AltSpace

Musk unveiled early plans for a multibillion-dollar Hyperloop concept in 2013, with a goal of significantly cutting travel time between major cities. For instance, Musk has said the project could eventually reduce the time for a train trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles from several hours to just 30 minutes. The concept involves sending self-propelled transportation pods through low-pressure vacuum tubes at speeds greater than 700 MPH.

Since then, SpaceX, Musk’s aerospace company, built a test track near its Hawthorne, California headquarters. In 2017, Musk said he ran a test with a Tesla-branded Hyperloop pod that reached a top speed of 220 MPH.

SpaceX has also looked for an open-source solution to Musk’s Hyperloop dream, with the company inviting teams of designers and engineers from around the world to submit their ideas for prototypes of the high-speed transportation pods that would one day make a Hyperloop system possible. SpaceX launched its annual Hyperloop Pod Competition in 2015.

The Delft Hyperloop’s team of 40 students worked to design a self-propelled pod that will compete against 20 other college teams from around the world on Sunday with prototype test runs on the SpaceX track, which is roughly one mile long. The Delft Hyperloop team’s goal is to eventually reach a top speed of 1,000 kilometer-per-hour (or, roughly, 620 MPH), though the team that won last year’s SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, from the Technical University of Munich, did so after reaching a top speed of about 290 MPH.

Elon Musk is not the only billionaire working to develop hyperloop technology, as Richard Branson’s Virgin Group partnered with Hyperloop One in 2017 with the goal of opening the first hyperloop to passengers by the “mid-2020s”, the company said in 2018. Virgin Hyperloop One even reportedly reached a top speed of 240 MPH in a 2018 test run.

Meanwhile, Amtrak President Richard Anderson said in 2017 that high-speed hyperloop pods replacing traditional train travel is unlikely to happen anytime soon. “I don’t think it’s realistic right now,” he told CNBC.

Image result for Hyperloop mexico

The ultra-fast Hyperloop train could reach Mexico in 2023

In 2017 the idea arose that in our country a project of the ultra-speed train in capsules inside high vacuum tubes, the Hyperloop , was built that would offer the possibility of traveling from the New International Airport of Mexico City (TBD) to Guadalajara in 38 minutes

Working on the Hyperloop one project, several engineers talk with representatives of the press

However, after the cancellation of this infrastructure, the plans fell apart. Even Andrés de León, director of Operations at Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, says there was never a specific agreement to carry it out, despite the fact that Mexico had won the option of hosting one of these infrastructures.

During a stopover he made for Mexico to raise funds, De León said that Mexico is an interesting market, an important market for it.

We had some approach, when working with us there has to be an investor to build this technology, ”he said.

The director of operations of Hyperloop came to present the project with the objective of attracting Mexican investors, that is, to contribute some amount so that the firm can continue promoting this new technology.

Image result for Hyperloop mexico

We have made a round, we raise about 40 million dollars. Now we have a second round, divided into a first phase of 50 million dollars and another of 150 million, there are 200 million dollars in total, ”de León told Excelsior .

“I would love that 50 million dollars were Mexican, I think there may be an appetite in the country because it is a very innovative model,” said Pedro Moreno, founder, and CEO of Hill House Capital, an investment management firm that is promoting the project. Hyperloop in our country.

He acknowledged that starting such a project in Mexico would completely change our conception of the country.

THE WAY

Traveling over a thousand kilometers per hour by land, in capsules that move through high vacuum tubes and with magnetic levitation, is not a science fiction story, but a reality that seeks to start through the Hyperloop project.

This is not science fiction, we do not reinvent the wheel, but we begin to build based on existing and proven technologies, it is not something our grandchildren will see, it is something that is happening now, ”said De León.

For this entrepreneur, connecting to distant cities in a matter of minutes is something tangible, profitable and not so expensive , so the first commercial line of this type will be in Dubai and will be opened in 2020, while our country could arrive later of 2023, although that depends on whether there are interested investors.

According to the project’s operations director, which emerged from the ideas of Elon Musk, a millionaire famous for creating companies such as PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX, the goal is not only to have a new means of transport, but a complete user experience , since it will have “augmented windows”, from where passengers could shop online and even have spaces such as gyms or massage services.

We are creating a new industry, a company that will license the technology to the infrastructure operator and the transport operator, the companies that have developed the technology will be the ones that implement the work. “As for the costs, the capsules are worth between 2.5 and four million dollars, plus the pipe.

Image result for Hyperloop mexico

Source: cnbc, excelsior

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