THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Imagine commuting from Delhi to Mumbai in an hour, from Bangalore to Chennai in 30 minutes and Chennai to Trivandrum in 40 mins. Called high-speed Hyperloop , this is what a team of students from top engineering and B-schools in the country including five Kerala natives promise to offer as a solution to address transportation woes in the country.

This team India is competing for the Space X Hyperloop challenge at its final contest in August at Hawthorne in California. It is the first and only team from India, and one of the two from Asia to be selected by SpaceX from among the top 24 finalists to build the super-fast mode of transport and race its pod alongside teams from colleges like Princeton.

Founded by a team of 60 students led by Team lead Sibesh Kar from BITS PIlani, Team Hyperloop India has now expanded into a multi-disciplinary 150-member strong think tank with students supported by mentors and experts from various organisations. The concept is based on the fifth mode of transportation `Hyperloop’ proposed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, which would enable passengers to travel between cities at over 700 miles per hour, enabling to live in one city and work in another. Hyperloop is a system that would propel a passenger vehicle or cargo vehicle at jet speeds through a pod-like or steel tube vehicle, due to magnetic levitation in near-vacuum using a linear electric motor.

Team Hyperloop India claims that their design called Orcapod can achieve speeds of up to 460 kilometres per hour in a vacuum tube. It has now expanded to a team comprising of the best minds from top engineering and B’ schools of the country including BITS Pilani University, Indian School of Business and IIM Ahmedabad. The students are supported and mentored by experts in transportation, logistics, infrastructure and data from organizations like Hyperloop One, MapmyIndia, SKF, Start-up India, Invest India, Workbench Projects, RITES, BMRCL, Jindal Aluminium, Peenya Industries Association, NITI Aayog, Ripple Technologies and DP World India.

In that innovative Team Hyperloop India, the five students from Kerala include Harikrishnan R Unnithan, Sreejith Pisharody and Hari SR from BITS Pilani Goa campus, and Sreeram Rajesh and Prithvi Shankar from BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus.

“Once the Orcapod levitates and races in the mile long vacuum tube at the test track in the final round at California, one more iteration is expected. On the test track, our target will be to develop a hyperloop of 95 metres per second and on a massive level, it can be scaled up to 1200 km per hour,” Harikrishnan R Unnithan, Electronics Lead of Hyperloop India team told TOI on Tuesday.

Team Hyperloop India requires Rs 30 lakh funds to build the pod prototype and make it to California for the final contest. They have put up their proposal to mobilise funds with crowd funding partner Keto and have raised Rs 3.56 lakh and only 22 days are left to raise the remaining amount. For the test, 15 members of the team can take part and in the final contest 50 team members can participate. This team was among the 1200 teams registered with SpaceX of which 120 teams were shortlisted and again after scrutiny 24 teams were shortlisted for the finals in August.

This comes in the wake of the Union Ministry’s ambitious plan to opt for Hyperloop as a future mode of transport between major cities including Delhi to Mumbai. Bangalore to Chennai and to Trivandrum. Currently, many American aerospace manufactures including `Hyperloop One' and `Hyperloop Transportation Technologies' are racing up and have come up with proposals to partner with India in developing Hyperloop for high speed transportation.

