LOS ANGELES – If you think of it as a train, it's really short and really fast.

But it's not. It's a "passenger capsule," just revealed by one of the companies vying to create what has become known as a hyperloop. That's the system designed to whisk people between cities through tubes.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, based in Los Angeles, showed off the sleek capsule capable of carrying 30 to 40 passengers.

The new capsule is "the real deal," said HyperloopTT CEO Dirk Ahlborn, who unveiled it last week in Spain, where it was built. It will next go to Toulouse, France, for testing next year as the company prepares to build initial hyperloop segments in China and Abu Dhabi.

Ahlborn envisions the capsule being able to travel the more than 400 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 36 minutes, levitating magnetically inside a tube for a complete lack of friction.

Several companies, including those headed by some of the world's best-known tycoons, are working to be among the first to create a system that would compete for both with high-speed trains and airlines.

Richard Branson, who is chairman of Virgin Hyperloop One, told CNBC in April that he wants it to be in operation within three years. Elon Musk, CEO of electric-car maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, has been backing the Boring Co. in its tunnel-digging efforts that could lead to a hyperloop.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, or HyperloopTT, as the company calls itself for short, considers the many rivals an advantage in order to generate interest around the notion of a hyperloop.

"We realized it has to be more than a company. It has to be a movement," Ahlborn said. "You have the whole world talking hyperloop."

The capsule is 105 feet long and is made of 82 carbon fiber panels. It is held together with 75,000 rivets, the company said. It has a front end that is sleek and contoured like the high-speed trains in Europe or Japan and a stubby back end.

Ahlborn said about 100 capsules would be needed to operate a line like one from Los Angeles to San Francisco, capable of departures as frequently as 45 seconds apart. He said the capsule was designed for speeds up to 750 mph, but "realistically" would operate at slower speeds, at least initially.