Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop has completed the world’s first passenger ride on a super high-speed levitating pod system, a key safety test for technology it hopes will transform human and cargo transportation, however it will still be atleast a decade before the public can potentially take a high-speed ride on a hyperloop.
Transportation history was made on Sunday in the Nevada desert, where Virgin Hyperloop tested human travel in a hyperloop pod for the first time. Virgin Hyperloop executives Josh Giegel, its Chief Technology Officer, and Sara Luchian, Director of Passenger Experience, reached speeds of up to 107 miles per hour (172 km per hour) at the company’s DevLoop test site in Las Vegas, Nevada, the company said. They sat in Virgin Hyperloop’s two-person pod, which includes seat belts, plush seats and small windows.
The first passengers made their maiden voyage on the newly-unveiled XP-2 vehicle, designed by BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and Kilo Design, which was custom-built with occupant safety and comfort in mind. While the production vehicle will be larger and seat up to 28 passengers, this 2-seater XP-2 vehicle was built to demonstrate that passengers can in fact safely travel in a hyperloop vehicle.
“I had the true pleasure of seeing history made before my very eyes,” said Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Chairman of Virgin Hyperloop and Group Chairman and Chief Executive of DP World.
“For the past few years, the Virgin Hyperloop team has been working on turning its ground breaking technology into reality,” said Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group. “With today’s successful test, we have shown that this spirit of innovation will in fact change the way people everywhere live, work, and travel in the years to come.”
Los Angeles-based Hyperloop envisions a future where floating pods packed with passengers and cargo hurtle through vacuum tubes at 600 miles an hour (966 kph) or faster.
In a hyperloop system, which uses magnetic levitation to allow near-silent travel, a trip between New York and Washington would take just 30 minutes. That would be twice as fast as a commercial jet flight and four times faster than a high-speed train. Virgin’s system includes magnetic levitation, much like used in advanced high speed rail projects in Japan and Germany.
Magnetic levitation lifts a train car above a track, as the magnets’ like poles push the train upward. The magnets also propel the train as like poles repel and push the train forward, and the opposite poles attract and pull the train forward. Magnetic levitation has been used on some train systems since the 1970s.
The company has previously run over 400 tests without human passengers at the Nevada site.
The test comes a month after Virgin Hyperloop picked the U.S. state of West Virginia to host a $500 million certification center and test track that will serve as a proving ground for its technology.
“I can’t tell you how often I get asked ‘is hyperloop safe?,’” said Jay Walder, CEO of Virgin Hyperloop. “With today’s passenger testing, we have successfully answered this question, demonstrating that not only can Virgin Hyperloop safely put a person in a pod in a vacuum environment, but that the company has a thoughtful approach to safety which has been validated by an independent third party.”
The company is working toward safety certification by 2025 and commercial operations by 2030, it has said.
Virgin Hyperloop envisions building systems that connect cities. Giegel said Virgin Hyperloop envisions carrying tens of thousands of passengers per hour. Virgin Hyperloop was founded as Hyperloop Technologies in 2014. Richard Branson joined its board of directors in 2017, and the company’s name was changed then.
In July 2020, the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) Secretary Elaine Chao and the Non-Traditional and Emerging Transportation Technology (NETT) Council unveiled the guidance document on a clear regulatory framework for hyperloop in the United States.
Hyperloop systems can run either above ground or below ground, but so far the company has focused on above-ground projects. Tunneling below ground can be time consuming and expensive.
Canada’s Transpod and Spain’s Zeleros also aim to upend traditional passenger and freight networks with similar technology they say will slash travel times, congestion and environmental harm linked with petroleum-fueled machines. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also announced a concept for such a system in 2013. Musk’s hyperloop venture, the Boring Company, has focused on building tunnels under cities, for a lower speed service in Tesla vehicles that don’t require a vacuum tube. It’s currently building a system in Las Vegas, called “Loop.”
India had labeled hyperloop as a public infrastructure project in August last year. It also kicked off a process that could bring hyperloop to a 93-mile stretch of India between the cities of Mumbai and Pune. The Pune Metropolitan Regional Development Authority was supposed to begin the procurement process in mid-August by starting to accept proposals from companies hoping to land the hyperloop contract.
The frontrunner for that project was likely Virgin Hyperloop One -DP World, a consortium between the hyperloop company and its biggest backer that pitched the original project to India. The MahaIDEA Committee had approved Virgin Hyperloop One-DP World Consortium as the Original Project Proponent.
Under the VHO-DPW proposal, a hyperloop capable of transporting 200 million people every year is to be built between Pune and Mumbai. That stretch of road now takes more than three hours by car; VHO says its hyperloop would reduce it to a 35-minute trip.
For those who might be interested to know, CFO of Virgin Hyperloop is a man of Indian Origin, Raja Narayanan. Narayanan is a graduate of Computer Science from University of Louisiana, Lafayette and has dual Bachelor’s degrees in Engineering and Physics from Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and University of Madras.
Well, it’s still time before any of these high-speed travel concepts turn into practical availability anywhere.