Post by thunkerdrone on May 13, 2016 10:43:13 GMT -5
Lightning speed transport system one step closer to reality
Thursday, May 12, 2016, 12:53 PM - Fast-forward to five years from now and Canadian residents may be travelling to their destinations in pods at a speed of 1,200 km/h.
Tech billionaire and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk has pushed his plans of a supersonic transport system into reality with the first public test of Hyperloop One. Under the hot Nevada sun, hundreds gathered to watch the prototype propulsion technology in action in Las Vegas Wednesday.
How does Hyperloop work?
The transportation system will move cargo and passengers through tubes, either under or above ground, at rocket speed. It involves levitating pods that use electricity and magnets to move through a low-friction environment. Designers say this type of technology could make the journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles in just 30 minutes.
The test model included a metal track, which stretched a couple hundred metres long with a metal sled that accelerated to about 190 km/h in just 1.1 seconds.
"We're actually building," Shervin Pishevar, co-founder of Hyperloop One said to spectators Wednesday. "It's not just slides or talk. We've built the components for the propulsion system and that's a pretty big piece of the whole solution."
Designers say despite the powerful acceleration, the ride will be smooth.
"So when you think of passengers travelling on this, we can control the acceleration so you won't feel any more acceleration than an airplane taking off," Hyperloop co-founder Brogan BamBrogan added.
The company hopes to have a fully functional hyperloop, including a five-kilometre track and tubes, to test by the end of the year.
"Where can we build this in a meaningful way?" CEO Rob Lloyd said. "We're asking Canadians, 'Is there a problem we can solve in Canada? Is there a route we should be looking at?"
Hyperloop One hopes to start moving cargo by 2019 and people by 2021. The company announced Tuesday that it completed another $80 million round of financing and was partnering with firms including, GE and SNCF, France's national state-owned railway company.
Hyperloop One impresses investors with speeding sled test in Nevada desert
Futuristic transportation firm shows it's 'onto something' in just four seconds
By Kim Brunhuber, CBC News Posted: May 11,
In the desert about 45 minutes north of the Las Vegas Strip, surrounded by Joshua trees and cacti, is a metal track. It runs a couple of hundred metres long and at one end is a three-metre metal sled. Hundreds of people watch from stands in the hot Nevada sun, waiting to see the sled move.
Those who designed and built the track call it their pre-Kitty Hawk moment; as momentous, claims Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd, as the moments before the Wright Brothers pointed their Flyer into the wind.
"That Kitty Hawk moment," he tells the crowd, "it's going to happen. And we then imagine how we're going to take this technology and solve the world's toughest problems."
Hyperloop one step closer to reality
Hyperloop: Imagine Toronto to Vancouver in 3 hours
Hyperbole? The investors watching in the stands hope not. What they're about to see is the first open-air test of hyperloop technology.
Elon Musk, founder of electric car giant Tesla Motors, dreamed up the idea: put passengers into a pod, stick that pod in a metal tube, make it levitate, then fire it down the tube at 1,200 km/h.
Crazy, right? Not according to Shervin Pishevar, who co-founded Hyperloop One.
Hyperloop One says it hopes to test a hyperloop inside a tube by the end of the year. (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
"We're actually building," he says. "It's not just slides or talk. We've built the components for the propulsion system and that's a pretty big piece of the whole solution."
That's what they are here to test: the propulsion system. There's no tube, no levitation, only the track on which sit slim white columns — electromagnets that will power the sled.
In the control centre, engineers count down: "Three, two, one, start!"
The sled rockets forward, reaching a speed of about 190 km/h. After about four seconds, it plows into the sand and comes to a stop. Everyone claps.
Hyperloop co-founder Brogan BamBrogan takes the microphone. Despite the powerful acceleration forces, he promises the ride will be smooth.
"So when you think of passengers travelling on this, we can control the acceleration so you won't feel any more acceleration than an airplane taking off," he says.
An outsider might come away from this test underwhelmed. But CEO Rob Lloyd — a Canadian — says passing this hurdle means Hyperloop One is well on its way to having a fully functional hyperloop to test by the end of the year.
"And when we complete it, we're looking at the world right now to say, 'Where can we build this in a meaningful way?'" Lloyd says. "We're asking Canadians, 'Is there a problem we can solve in Canada? Is there a route we should be looking at?'"
Many current and potential investors say they were impressed with what they saw Wednesday. (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
Several other companies are developing their own hyperloops and the competition for investors is stiff. On Tuesday, Hyperloop One announced $80 million in new financing.
Wednesday's test may have gone a long way to impressing investors like Lorraine Jackson.
"It's fantastic," she says. "Exciting. Futuristic. I would definitely like to invest in this — I have invested — and I think it's the future."
Hyperloop companies vie to build ultra-fast transportation pods
Transpod's dream: Hyperloop high-speed travel between cities
Shahril Ibrahim, who represents a Malaysian government wealth fund called Khazanah, says he's been tracking the company for some time. The test, he says, surprised him.
"It was very impressive," Ibrahim says. "They're a lot further than we thought they were. So I think they're onto something."
Lloyd says hyperloops will be in production within the next five years. The company hopes to carry cargo by 2019, and its first passengers two years later.
Hyperloop: Imagine Toronto to Vancouver in 3 hours
New form of transportation could be feasible in 4 years
t's simple: Imagine a capsule filled with people, hovering inside a tube, moving faster than a jet. Vancouver to Toronto in about three hours. Toronto to Montreal in 30 minutes. And Montreal to Miami in less than two hours. It would mean the ability to commute to work not just from another area code, but another province.
"We're not a plane, we're not a train, we're not a car. It's a Hyperloop," says the CEO of Hyperloop Technologies Rob Lloyd. "The construct of Hyperloop is like a transportation backbone that will do the same thing for the transportation and the movement of physical things as the internet has done for the digital world."
Hyperloop Technologies CEO, Canadian Rob Lloyd (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
In 2013, Tesla founder Elon Musk sketched out his vision for a levitating pod that would carry people through a tube. Then he challenged others to design and build it. It's not exactly a new idea; as far back as the 1800s, New York built a pneumatic subway. But it was too difficult and too expensive. Until now.
Montreal to Toronto in 30 minutes: Startup's goal with Hyperloop technology
Lloyd takes me on a tour of Hyperloop's facility in downtown Los Angeles. He ushers me outside to the back of the facility and points out a massive steel tube.
"So this is the size of the tube, it's about an 11-foot [3.35-metre] diameter," Lloyd says. "This is the size we're constructing out in the desert right now in North Las Vegas."
At the Hyperloop Transportation Technologies headquarters, they outfitted a model of a hyperloop with seats to test the layout. (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
It seems somehow fitting that what some see as the future of mass transportation is being built next to an old rail yard. Unlike a train, a Hyperloop capsule wouldn't make any stops. You'd go straight from where you are to where you want to go.
"We remove the air pressure from that tube equivalent to being 160,000 feet [48,800 metres] above the Earth's surface," Lloyd says. "We create a pod which could carry either passengers or freight, and then we levitate that pod inside of a track in the tube. We use an electric motor to kind of propel it along. The result of that is you can go really fast."
Aiming for 2020
Removing air resistance means the capsule could travel about 1,200 kilometres per hour; just under the speed of sound. There'd be no risk of driver error; there would be no human driver. And without rails or roads, Lloyd, a Canadian, says Hyperloop would mean the end of weather-related transportation delays.
"This would make things really good for Canadians who are actually very used to the interruptions that we see in the winter," Lloyd says. "You don't have interference from snow. There's no ice. I think that a lot of people are looking forward to something that's reliable, that leaves when you want to leave and actually changes how we think of transportation forever."
By 2020, Hyperloop Technologies hopes to start moving freight. Then, eventually, people.
"I'm fully expecting others to follow, and we welcome that competition," Lloyd says.
His main competition is a company with the same goal and almost the same name, based only kilometres away: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies.
Its CEO, Dirk Alhborn, shows me the new vacuums that have just arrived.
"Today, our team is more than 500 people. Some of the biggest companies in the world are part of what we're doing," Ahlborn says. "It takes a movement to make these things happen."
An illustration of how a Hyperloop tube would work. (Hyperloop Transportation Technologies)
In a couple of months, it, too, will build a test track. The company just signed an agreement to explore building a Hyperloop in eastern Europe. But unlike its competitor, here, no-one gets paid.
"So, the way we're doing it is completely different," Ahlborn says. "We're, I would say, a movement more than a company."
Experts volunteer their time in exchange for stock options. Trailblazing L.A. architect Craig Hodgetts was attracted to the project from the start.
"I got involved with the Hyperloop actually in a kind of karmic way," Hodgetts says. Years earlier he tried to write a screenplay about Tesla. He even named his canary Tesla.
"So Elon Musk was somehow in my DNA for a while. I was obsessed, and on a parallel track, I had been launching all kinds of ideas speculatively about different kinds of transportation, MegLev, straddle bus, a kind of levitation device which I designed in the fantasy world, and so when the Hyperloop concept kind of gelled and became tangible and I got associated with it at UCLA, it felt like the conjunction of all these forces had all come together in precisely the right way."
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies CEO Dirk Ahlborn says the first real Hyperloop route will probably be built overseas. (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
He says the environmental benefits speak for themselves. But Hyperloop could change the way we commute‚ even communicate.
"It's the person-to-person that I think is going to be the most important, because you can imagine, we're losing face-to-face contact with our business associates and even our friends," Hodgetts says. "So that maybe rather than having them meet on Skype, a business meeting, we have a business center at the terminal, and people zapping from the other city for a face-to-face thing, and go back home and have dinner."
Interior like a jet
He and his students at UCLA are designing the capsule's interior. Think less bus, more executive jet.
"We will exploit all kinds of new media to enhance your travel experience," Hodgetts says.
That new media has another use: it could provide ways to make the service self-sufficient and subsidize travel for its passengers.
"This is the sign-in screen for the app," says Lloyd Marino, who is designing some of the interactive tools for Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Customers. "Through the use of big data, there are a lot of things that we start to understand about you. By doing that we can subsidize your travel experience by offering you things," Marino says.
Basically, if you allow the company access to your data, you could ride at a discount.
"Sure, we can sell ads," Marino says."There's a lot we know about you, so by knowing your behaviour there are a lot of offerings we can serve up to you through this application to make your experience potentially free. If you commute to work every day, and that behaviour shows up in your profile, well now I can start offering you things on your daily commute. So perhaps a coffee at a particular coffee bar, offer you a dollar off because you'll wind up being a regular."
Los Angeles architect Craig Hodgetts is one of the hundreds of volunteers donating their time to the Hyperloop project in exchange for stock options. (Kim Brunhuber/CBC)
Hyperloop has to be financially sustainable without much public investment, Ahlborn says. He says a route from Los Angeles to San Francisco could be profitable within eight years.
"So it makes economical sense which is very important, especially if you imagine the train industry is a dinosaur industry, and trains, metros, it's heavily subsidized, it doesn't make economical sense," Ahlborn says. "So we have the possibility to build something that is not only is better but it also doesn't need taxpayer's money. So you'll see more public transportation and better public transportation."
First routes likely outside of North America
There are challenges of course. Safety, for one. And the regulations: getting the permits to build and operate.
"It takes a long time," Ahlborn acknowledges. "It would take 20 to 30 years if you wanted to do this here (in California). Bureaucracy is a big, big hurdle. Most of the time these types of projects are political. They are funded by the government. Well, governments change every four to five years, so it's very difficult to get these large infrastructure and innovation projects out."
He believes the first Hyperloop routes will likely be built overseas.
"If you go to Beijing where there's 30, 50 million people in one place, on a good day, you're lucky if you can see your hand in front of your face," Ahlborn says. "Traffic today determines so many things. And being a company that's all around the globe – we have people in China and India and Africa – we're there, we're local. We talk to the local authorities, we know the local problems, we have been very well received everywhere around the world. "
Lloyd says he doesn't expect Hyperloop to replace any existing modes of transportation — even the old trains that chug behind his headquarters.
"I think Hyperloop is going to be the fifth mode of transportation incrementally providing options for existing modes and we'll need to connect with those modes," he says. "We'll need to be able to order a Hyperloop on your phone, show up at the station whenever you want and maybe catch an Uber at the other end. And that's the kind of end to end experience that we think we'll be delivering in an on-demand economy."
