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Elon Musk Inspired an Industry of Hyperloop Startups. Now He's Building His Own (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Elon Musk introduced his vision for a futuristic mode of tube-based transportation called the hyperloop in 2013. In an exhaustive white paper, he laid out a body of research conducted with his team at Space Exploration Technologies demonstrating the system's viability and seemingly offered it as a gift to the entrepreneurial community. "I don't have any plan to execute because I must remain focused on SpaceX and Tesla," he said in a conference call at the time. He apparently changed his mind. Last month, the SpaceX and Tesla chief executive officer revealed on Twitter that he'd received "verbal government approval" to build a hyperloop capable of ferrying passengers between New York and Washington, D.C., in 29 minutes. The tweet came as a shock to executives at the various startups racing to develop their own hyperloops based on Musk's specifications. Several of them initially expressed hope that Musk would simply dig the tunnels and perhaps choose one of their startups to create the physical infrastructure, which involves a tube-encased train traveling at speeds faster than an airplane. Nope. A person close to Musk said his plan is to build the entire thing, including the hyperloop system. Musk also holds a trademark for "Hyperloop" through SpaceX, which could be used to prevent other companies from using the term, according to U.S. public records. The billionaire's unexpected entry into the hyperloop business could threaten the ambitions of three startups, which have raised about $200 million combined from venture backers. "There's probably a finite amount of capital willing to bet on this space -- and bet against him," said Jonathan Silver, the former loan programs director at the U.S. Department of Energy. Silver learned not to underestimate Musk after overseeing a 2010 loan of $465 million to Tesla, which the electric carmaker paid back, with interest, nine years ahead of schedule.
no, you are missing the point. Hyperloop does not compete with cars. it competes with airplanes.
Why did people stop using trains in the mid 20th century? Because cars came about! Why do people like cars better than trains? Because cars don't have a set schedule that must be followed to the minute.
As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it. Nobody wanted to be a slave to the train schedule 100 years ago, and nobody will want to go back to being a slave to the train schedule again, either. Thinking otherwise is a fools errand.
That ignores the whole part about building it. It took 90 years and 4 billion dollars to get an additional 2 miles of subway track added to new york city. Philadelphia has been trying to make their subway 8 city blocks longer for over 50 years now and has gotten absolutely nowhere. But we're supposed to believe that a 400 mile long tube is just gonna magically show up across the I 95 corridor overnight? With that kind of thinking I might as well start going to church again.
Nobody?
There are millions of people in Chicago and New York alone that are a "slave to a train/bus" every single day and have been for decades.. Many of them don't even own cars... So, "nobody" is a false assertion by far.
Yea... I live in NYC and despite the MTAs shortcomings I find that the subway gives me *more* freedom. It doesn't run on a fixed schedule, you just go and wait and eventually a train shows up to take you where you need to go. It's cheap, $2.50 to go anywhere and I don't get harassed by the police looking to bolster their budgets. I can go out to the bars, get shit-faced, and get home without having to worry about where I parked my car or paying for a taxi. I don't have to pay car insurance or maintain a pile of metal and plastic that's slowly decaying.
I dream of NYC banning personal vehicles all together and leave half the local streets to taxis and delivery vehicles and the other half for bikes/parks/walkways.
As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it
Hyperloop uses many small independent pods rather than a single long train. So on a busy route such as NYC to DC, a pod would launch every minute or so. Rather than a fixed schedule, it would make more sense to just launch each pod as it filled up.
This guy wants to be Steve Jobs so bad it's fucking comical. Steve Jobs was unduly idolized and poor musk wants the same thing so badly. You've nor your company have innovated anything. The US Tax Pay funded both Tesla and SolarShitty. Now you think a train is a technological marvel...
Well, in all fairness, he's already done more to help mankind so far than Jobs did. Jobs made some great commercial electronics but nothing revolutionary. The iPhone was a well put together piece of equipment and his best contribution, but it's not like there weren't already similar products before, and co-currently being worked on by other teams. His was just better than anything else in the beginning... the smart phone revolution was dawning anyway- he just made it better and maybe sped it up a year or two.
Musk on the other hand has single handedly pulled the world up and made electric cars a reality. It's not the fringe technology we might develop 20 years from now, in perpetuity any more.
His impact is so big, countries are beginning to mandate electric cars in the future His impact with electric cars has also spurred a battery revolution for solar panels- solar panels were coming anyway, so were home batteries- but he's made big impacts there.
He has leapstarted self driving vehicles. Whilst Google has been floundering for a decade- Tesla has gone ahead and done it and made it a reality. Maybe not whole-hog, maybe not even close, but his baby steps towards self-driving has made the technology a reality and other automanufacturers are taking note.
He's also been leading the only really successful team for privatized space. Sure Virgin Galactic, and a few others are looking promising, but he's pretty much spurred a whole second space-age.
If Hyperloop works and doesn't turn into vapour, it promises to be a massive change on how we think about transport. I'm less optimistic for hyperloop than his other ventures, but it could potentially be a big shaker.
So yeah, Jobs had some nice consumer electronics, but Musk has already done more that is useful to mankind. He's not just turning over a profit, he's doing useful stuff that betters man. He long since overshot Jobs.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I don't think you understand anything about Hyperloop (like 98% of the people who complain about the concept).
* Hyperloop pods leave every few minutes. There is no "schedule" like with trains.
* Hyperloop pods in the "large" variant carry cars. And that seems to be the variant that Musk is pursuing.
* As for cost (and this gets very tedious having to go into this on every thread): the reason for the costs in Hyperloop Alpha being low vs. HSR are.. first, the fundamentals:
1) Hyperloop costs are budgeted at rates similar to (but more expensive than) pipelines, on a "length times cross section" basis. Because it is a pipeline, not a railroad. It has a number of aspects that make it more expensive than a pipeline (greater straightness requirements, interior polishing, higher elevation, human factors, partial-vacuum pumping) and cheaper (low pressure is easier to resist than high, vastly lower pumping energy requirements, no risk of environmental contamination making approval expensive, vastly lower mass loadings, little to no thermal management needs, etc).
2) The cost to elevate something (like a rail viaduct) is almost linearly proportional to peak loading. Hyperloop pods are an order of magnitude lighter than HSR trains. The peak loadings are also much more transient, which is much easier to resist.
3) Because the elevation cost is reduced, it lets them build the whole thing elevated over public right-of-ways (assuming the government has buy-in - which for getting a high speed transport system at no cost to them, is not an unrealistic expectation), greatly reducing acquisition costs. This is limited by bending radii.
4) While permitting is still required, building over a public right-of-way - something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation - is much cheaper than permitting for greenfield development.
Now for the cheats in the Alpha document:
5) Hyperloop serves fewer passenger trips than CA-HSR - it's in-between HSR numbers and air passenger numbers.
6) It stops in fewer locations - it's just a direct LA-SF route.
7) It doesn't go into town. It's far more expensive to build in-town than out of town. The document excuses this on the premise that airports are located out of town - but airports are located there because they often must be, not because people want them there.
8) To get government permission to use right-of-ways, they should be expected to have impositions for more stops (just like HSR had to) and/or in-town terminals (as HSR has to pay for).
A note about the cost: there are small tunneling sections in Hyperloop Alpha; however, none of them are in-town (which is very expensive). They're budgeted at standard tunneling rates per unit length times cross section (the tube is very low cross section compared to road and water tunnels). However, this ignores what Musk is trying to achieve with Boring Company (major reductions in tunneling cost); if Boring Company succeeds, then this portion of Hyperloop Alpha is overbudgeted.
That is all.
He's really very... gentle... and fuzzy. We're becoming fast friends.
Why did people stop using trains in the mid 20th century?
They didn't in much of the world. Passenger rail is alive and well.
Why do people like cars better than trains? Because cars don't have a set schedule that must be followed to the minute.
Strawman. People don't necessarily like cars better. In many parts of the US they simply don't have a choice. I've lived in cities where passenger rail was an option and it was hugely useful and I generally preferred it to driving in many cases. (traffic jams suck) Whether cars or trains are advantageous is circumstance dependent. It also depends on what infrastructure has been invested in. Trains are economically efficient for a certain set of conditions. They are widely used in Europe and Asia. Honestly I would happily ride a train to work if it were feasible where I live.
As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it.
People all around the world ride trains and airplanes and even boats on fixed schedules. Including in the US. The fact that the schedule is fixed is not necessarily a disadvantage, especially when it is as reliable as the trains in Japan. The primary advantage of cars is that they can go point to point rather than having their start and end points fixed. The lack of a schedule with cars is usually a much more minor advantage in the presence of a well functioning passenger rail system. Go to a city like NYC or Chicago and odds are you'll park the car and ride the light rail system + taxis to get around.
It took 90 years and 4 billion dollars to get an additional 2 miles of subway track added to new york city.
Which is irrelevant regarding whether hyperloop systems would be cost efficient. A subway in one of the most densely populated cities in the world isn't really a good comparison. If you want to make a proper comparison consider the efforts to put in high speed rail in the US. A lot of land will need to be purchased and right of ways obtained. The reason passenger rail struggles in the US is precisely because 1) we didn't invest in obtaining the right of ways years ago when it would have been cheaper and 2) population density in large parts of the country. But in places where the infrastructure exists and the population density is sufficient, like in the Northeast Corridor or in much of Europe and Japan, trains are popular and heavily used for transport.
I have my doubts that a hyperloop system will make economic sense. I suspect it will fail for much the same reason monorails never really caught on. But there may be specific cases where it makes a lot of sense so I'm withholding judgement until there is more data to work with. Worst case is that it's kind of a nifty technology that might have interesting applications down the road.