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The Hyperloop Industrial Complex
Jason Koebler writes: Two and a half years after Elon Musk pitched the technology, actually traveling on a hyperloop is still theoretical, but its effect on business is not. There is a very real, bonafide industry of people whose job description is, broadly speaking "make the hyperloop into a tangible thing." The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Design Weekend at Texas A&M University earlier this weekend was the coming out party for people in that industry.
A ground-level, rail-mounted tube doesn't expend energy holding itself against gravity, and faces less wind resistance than an airplane in orbit. That means operating the hyperloop would require less total energy expenditure than operating an air plane.
The Tesla car has higher instantaneous torque and a flat torque curve. The cost for me to drive 300 miles on gasoline is around $25 now; on biofuel, it's around $35; on diesel, it's around $12; on electricity, it's $3. Battery storage loses less energy in conversion than biofuel chemical storage. Electric cars are less complex and require less maintenance than reciprocating piston engines. Superior power, performance, durability, longevity, and cost doesn't seem inferior.
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Comparing a hyperloop to an airplane is apples to oranges. Misk himself says that longer journies (like east to west coast USA) would be more economically feasible by plane. A hyperloop is much more like a maglev train in that it's suited to midrange journies that take hours by car but aren't worth the hassle of an airport. When compared to high speed rail, hyperloops have some very real advantages.
Also, calling EVs Musk's expensive toys when you can clearly see the entire industry introducing their own EVs is disingenuous. Certainly you can see that EVs have some very real advantages over fossil fuel cars.
How much does the battery cost to replace?
Or is the battery non-expendable?
This is what a special-interest framing argument looks like. It puts the question into the reader's mind, and without context (and noting that most readers don't take the time to think about things) it makes it seem like an insurmountable problem.
(Viz: "Ted Cruze's Canadian birth will be a problem for him, I'm just 'sayin".)
Tesla is addressing the battery issue directly, with a buy-back program.
Also note that Lithium batteries have an exponential usage lifetime ('sorta), which means that once you've depleted your battery to 90% of it's capacity, it'll stay at that level for a long time.
Also also note that a battery which is taken out of service will still have 85% of it's charge capacity for a really long time, and there are a lot of uses for such storage. A factory building filled with old Tesla batteries could help smooth out electrical grid demand - supplying power during peak times, and recharging at night.
(Put that building full of batteries next to a wind farm, or inside the industrial area of a large city.)
Again, the batteries will keep 85% of their capacity for a long time, and if the application doesn't care much about space or weight, this makes a good use for older batteries.
Also, no one has even begun thinking about recycling the batteries. Ten years from now we might start thinking about reforming batteries, and making removable/reusable cases with the option to recycle the lithium inside. Like we now do with lead.
And finally, all of this information is just a click away using this neat new service called "Google".
Implanting doubts, uncertainty, and fear in the minds of readers is so much harder nowadays.
Sure, both of them do ... but with airlines you build the infrastructure at the end-points only. The bits which connect those end-points? You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.
With a hyperloop ... you need either central hubs to get people to their destinations, or multiple routes to get to multiple destinations. Just like cars and trains do now.
Connecting all of your destinations with lots of routes, that's going to get expensive. Doing them with many hubs and hops from one to the other? One begins to wonder if the whole thing still works as claimed or is even viable, or if it just becomes the same issues we have now.
Or, worse, you hyperloop to an airport and then get on a plane ... and all of your supposed benefits pretty much vanish.
You quickly wonder just how many thousands of miles of this stuff you'd need to build, and just how huge of an undertaking that would be.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"That means operating the hyperloop would require less total energy expenditure than operating an air plane"
Besides the energy needed to ,you know, *build* the entire infrastructure... Which wears out, as opposed to air.
And why do you call it an "air plane" in two words? Are you posting from the 19th century?
The estimated cost of the hyperloop is between $6 and $8 billion.
The cost to build one terminal in a big city airport is in the neighborhood of $2 billion (terminal 4 at JFK, in today's dollars). And the hyperloop would replace two ends, so double that to $4 billion.
So as a quick estimate you could build the hyperloop and replace the functionality of 2 terminals and it would cost roughly twice as much.
It would also use much less land (no runways needed), and could terminate in the middle of a city a'la Grand central station.
You could move twice as many people, lots more freight, and at the same time spend less on energy, use less land, make less pollution, have less noise pollution, and be safer.
It's not quite as cut-and-dried as your out-of-context note would indicate.
USA struggles just to get started in high speed rail systems of what rest of industrialized countries has for years. HSR has face significant resistance in culture and business (sorry the excuse for it costs too much is bankrupted considering how much this country has spent on other stuff with not much to show for it). Now along comes Hyperloop and HSR opponents immediately say we need to go this route because it's done by private industry. Not that there is anything wrong with private industry but I don't see them as implementing it where it needs to go, only where the investment pays off for them. However, as gstoddart pointed out this is a buzzword before business model that may kill HSR in the US and then it will go way of all those dotcom companies leaving nothing behind.
mfwright@batnet.com
My actual concern is our ability to maintain it. A good friend of mine who is a civil engineer specializing in trains has been involved in proposals to build things like mag lev trains in the US. His determination is that we generally do not do a good enough job of maintaining infrastructure for projects that require high tolerances. We like to build it, we like to run it, but maintenance... not so much. Hell even the bullet train in Japan, just a rain system, has a train packed with instruments that runs the tracks regularly looking for imperfections and issues, we can barely keep our bridges standing. What are the odds that we take sufficiently good care of the hyperloop system in order to keep it operating safely.
Perhaps we will develop it and the rest of the world will use it, but if we want to have nice toys like this we need to start dealing with the maintenance of such infrastructure (and maybe our other existing infrastructure while we are at it)
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I am not quite sure what ultraistic means, but I suspect is has something to do with comparing a very smart man who has had success in at least four different industries, to you.
If they just build the first line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas they should make their money back rather quickly (and probably get plenty of casino-based investors to help pay for it). The next legs could be Phoenix to Vegas or a San Diego to Vegas (perhaps with an L.A. connector).
Sure, both of them do ... but with airlines you build the infrastructure at the end-points only. The bits which connect those end-points? You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.
You mean other than the entire airspace spanning Air Traffic Control infrastructure that costs ~$7B per year to run? Lots of radar, stations, towers and other stuff to control things other than just the end-points.
If airports were cost-effective, airlines would build them. Airlines don't build airports; therefore, airports are not cost-effective.
If roads were cost-effective, drivers would pay the full cost of them. Drivers pay less than half the cost of the roads. Therefore, roads are not cost-effective.
So what's left? What mode of transportation pays for itself?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The only way that diesel costs half as much as gasoline on a cost/trip basis is if you treat the whacky CA fuels market as the boundaries of your universe, with $2.60/gal reg and $2.40/gal ULSD.
In most of the US, you're looking at $1.50/gal reg and $2.10/gal ULSD, and then that difference goes away. An engine that has 25% higher energy efficiency running on a fuel that has 10% greater volumetric energy density cannot overcome a fuel that costs 35% more per volume.
In the rest of the universe, you also amortize the cost of the vehicle that gets you there and add it to the energy cost. A vehicle that costs 3-4x as much makes much of that difference go away as well.
BTW: At CA electricity and gas prices you're claiming that a 100% efficient Tesla, consuming only 62MJ of electricity, will make that trip, but a gasoline powered car would require 1180MJ to make the same trip. That is a 5% fuel-to-travel efficiency, not the 14-30% that is known.
All in all, your figures are crap.
First, let's drop the hype, this idea is ancient for 'new ideas', it was published in an issue of Popular Mechanics older than Elon Musk (40s era issue I believe) .
Now here's a huge issue I haven't seen anyone talking about that gets progressively worse as the track/tube length increases, subsidence and ground movement.
Yes, that's right, all those super tight tolerances needed to keep it air tight and within safe turning range of a high speed capsule are at risk.
No matter how much we like to pretend, the earth isn't 'rock solid steady'.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up soil subsidence, faults, and even earth tide.
Earth tide is an interesting one and it can be around half a meter, depending on location and conditions, but it effects pretty much the entire planet.
The point is, there are serious issues about trying to keep an airtight low pressure tube of extraordinary length intact and functionally safe, especially when you're going to be shooting giant passenger carrying bullets down it. That's one target you better not miss.
Yes, there are probably a ton of other issues I've never thought of, but I'm not an engineer and it's not my job to be intimately familiar with variant thermal expansion rates or whatever else might go wrong with this concept. I still think it makes cool mad science fiction, but I don't see it being a rational expenditure of resources and effort at this time. (By the way, how much material would such a full sized tube use up, and whats the current national production of said materials?)
If by average purchase you mean average age of cars on the road, you're very wrong. The average age of a car on the road in the US just surpassed 11 years old. This is exactly why the longevity and long term resale of a car is very important. I know I won't even think about an electric car until they ensure it will last at least 10 years without an expensive overall. I'm currently driving a 14 year old car and have no plans to buy a new one as this one keeps going strong, I have real doubts the same can be said for electrics.
First off, you do make some good points (especially with regard to the utility of having the station in the city center, instead of a 30-60 minute drive outside of town), but, that said, you're also oversimplifying things. Probably the most egregious example is to suggest that building the hyperloop replaces the cost of two airline terminals (especially using JFK as a model). JFK serves dozens, if not hundreds, of discrete destinations, while the hyperloop serves two. Worse, the hyperloop destinations are only a few hundred miles apart. JFK has flights to six continents. In other words, unless you are advocating replacing all air travel with hyperloop style transport (something that would cost several orders of magnitude more than the short range test project) you are comparing apples to oranges.
Lastly, you are looking at sunk costs vs new investments. It's not "we can pay for the hyperloop instead of the airport" because the airport already exists.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.
You are ignoring costs such as:
- pilot labor (hyperloop will probably be fully automated)
- air traffic control (could be mostly or fully automated as well)
- maintenance (not sure the maintenance requirements of hyperloop but surely not as extensive as aircraft maintenance)
- security (the potential for terrorist damage is much smaller considering you can't fly one arbitrarily into a building)
You quickly wonder just how many thousands of miles of this stuff you'd need to build, and just how huge of an undertaking that would be.
Same concern with roads and railways, with the same answer: it only matters if the economic advantage isn't high enough.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Advantage #342 of HyperLoop - unlike High Speed Rail, it doesn't share its infrastructure with overladen freight trains which tear up the rails and lead to lengthy delays and a unsmooth ride.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Regular gas is actually $1.95 in California (source: filled up today). Of course, it could easily be $5 again in a year with the right combination of events. Electricity prices are considerably more stable.
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Hmm... Lots of the roads, specifically the large interstate highways, were built after the New Deal had ended. They were built under the auspices of Present Eisenhower. He'd seen the military and civilian value in the autobahn and wanted to emulate its successes. (Note: The autobahn was not completed and was smaller then than it is now.)
I believe the story goes a bit like this:
Eisenhower saw a photograph of some Panzers going balls out in a line down the freakin' highway. He looked to his Aide De Camp and said, in his bestest and most Generalist voice, "Shit niggah! We gotta get some of that shizat up in this bitch. Dat be some phat shit dawg. Ya hear me?" His aide said, "Fuck ya, y'all gonna get busy up in there with their cars and shit but we made that shit fo tanks. For tanks! Tanks, bitch-ass-mother-fuckers made for tanks and aint no fuck gonna know that shit. I fucking hear ya, Big D Dizzle-dawg-hower, you feel me?"
And so, in the history books it is written. The laws were passed, the research done, the money spent, and the highways made big enough for tanks but mostly used by cars and trucks.
(General Dwight Eisenhower was also known as "The Big G" but when he became president he usually went for "Super P" and, while it's only a rumor, it's generally believed that the P was for Pimp.)
And, before anyone asks/accuses, I'm actually part black (mostly Amerindian, if you're curious) and currently have three people sharing this house with me who are also black. No Ebonics were harmed in the making of this post. Also, the reasoning for why I have three people sharing the house is long and complicated but it has been fun to have all these extra people around.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Sarcasm is lost on some I guess...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I probably need batteries for my meter. :/
"So long and thanks for all the fish."