The first basic test of Elon Musk’s ambitious high-speed transport system for California has taken place – and it was over in an instant

MIT’s pod test cart crashes into a sand bank after its first run John Gursinski/AFP/Getty Images

IS THE future of transport barrelling towards us? Over the past week, several groups in the US unveiled early models for the Hyperloop, Elon Musk’s imagined “fifth mode” of travel – after planes, trains, cars and boats.

Musk, co-founder of SpaceX, first published his sketches for the Hyperloop in August 2013. In his vision, pods of people would shoot down low-pressure tubes at speeds up to 1220 kilometres per hour, propelled by linear induction motors similar to those used on roller coasters.

“The dream is a mode of transportation that is incredibly fast, convenient and carbon-free“


Musk claimed the commute from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which takes about 6 hours to drive or more than an hour to fly, could be cut to 35 minutes.

On 11 May, in the Nevada desert, an independent company named Hyperloop One held the first public demonstration of its technology. A metal sled shot along a 900-metre open-air track in 1.1 seconds – although without any of the complexities of low-pressure tubes that a real system would need.

“We whooped, high-fiving all around, and hugs. I had tears mixed with sand,” Hyperloop One co-founder Shervin Pishevar wrote in a blog post. A larger-scale test is slated for later this year – on a longer track.

The test sled and recovery vehicle following the first test in Nevada John Gursinski/AFP/Getty Images

Meanwhile, SpaceX is holding an open competition to build the pods that will travel on the Hyperloop. On Friday, a student team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first to show off their pod, at an event in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The MIT designs, which rely on magnetic levitation, won an interim prize from the competition in January. Later this year, they and other teams will have a chance to test their versions at a track outside the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

The Hyperloop is “once a concept, now very much in development”, says MIT team captain Philippe Kirschen. “The dream is a mode of transportation that is incredibly fast, incredibly convenient and it’s conceivably carbon-free.”

In a 57-page document setting out his original Hyperloop vision, Musk estimated that the project would cost no more than $6 billion, but many have since suggested it could come to at least ten times that much. Musk also claimed that a one-way ticket would cost only $20.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Hyperloop’s first flight”