Andhra may get India’s first Hyperloop between Vijayawada and Amaravati

A drive between the two cities which usually takes an hour, will be turned into a six-minute journey.

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India's first hyperloop is likely to come up between Amaravati and Vijayawada and will begin soon, if all goes well.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of CII Partnership Summit in Visakhapatnam on Saturday, chairman and co-founder of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Bibop Gresta, said that travelling between the two cities would only be a matter of minutes.

He stated that Amaravati was a good place to start as the environment is unique, saying, "You have a density of population, a lack of infrastructure, and a need for a faster, sustainable and efficient way to move people and goods."

“Our technology is totally different. We have created a system that uses a combination of renewable energy to generate more electricity than it consumes. This ensures affordable cost of construction and maintenance... the capsule can move at a very high speed with very little energy, making the system highly efficient,” he was quoted as saying.

In September last year, Andhra Pradesh said that it would kickstart a feasibility study to develop a Hyperloop between Amaravati and Vijayawada, as the AP Economic Development Board (AP-EDB) and US-based Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU).

“The study will not only tell us about the feasibility of the project, but also its profitability. Once that is done and if the chief minister gives us the go-ahead, we will be ready to roll out the project,” Gresta said, adding that it could take around four to five years to finish the project.

Hyperloop, an idea from Tesla CEO and SpaceX Founder Elon Musk, boasts of a transportation system which proposes to propel a pod-like vehicle through a near-vacuum tube at nearly 1,100 km per hour and above.

The pod lifts off the track using magnetic levitation and glides at aircraft speeds for long distances, owing to ultra-low aerodynamic drag.

In March last year, Los Angeles-based company Hyperloop One announced a proposal to evaluate construction of five lines in India. It said that the five proposed lines include Bengaluru to Chennai, Mumbai to Chennai via Bengaluru, Bengaluru to Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai to Delhi and Mumbai to Kolkata.

If the proposed plane comes to life, the company said that people can reach Chennai from Bengaluru in 20 minutes. The 1,102 km Mumbai to Chennai via Bengaluru line was slated to have a travel period of 50 minutes.

The company has developed a test track titled ‘DevLoop’ in the Nevada Desert in the United States of America. The company has been eyeing India as a key customer for the developing technology.

But lest one gets too excited about this possibility, it should be noted that Hyperloop is a futuristic and highly expensive technology, and is still many stages away from being commercially deployed.