The hyperloop is up there with artificial intelligence as one of the worst-reported tech stories of our time. Rarely is so much written about an idea that until recently had not even been demonstrated at a small scale, where executives’ wild claims on conference stages go unchecked, or flagrant stunts are reported on glowingly as a step to an inevitable future of supersonic travel in tubes. Sorry, Elon Musk fans: the hyperloop is mostly hype. That’s a shame, as you don’t have to be a commuter in to London to know that our transport infrastructure is broken.
So the news that Richard Branson is investing in Hyperloop One – now renamed Virgin Hyperloop One – is a significant one. The Virgin brand brings experience and connections in the transport sector (through its Atlantic airline, Virgin Trains, and his still-nascent space tourism business), and Branson brings leadership clout to a company still reeling from the damage to its reputation by an acrimonious lawsuit between two of its co-founders.
Since that lawsuit was settled out of court, the Hyperloop story has seen some not insignificant developments: Elon Musk has, after initially declaring himself too busy to build one, re-entered the race, confirming to WIRED plans to build actual hyperloop routes through his LA-based venture The Boring Company. Hyperloop One has completed the first small-scale test of its system, reaching 305kph in a near-vacuum. The company already has partnerships with some of the biggest engineering firms in the business, substantial financial backing, and a rumoured valuation of $700million. Of the various companies in the space, it's made by far the most progress.
(Rival company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has, despite numerous promises, still not demonstrated much more than graduate show-type mockups and vaguely-worded announcements of exploratory partnerships.)
However.
Branson, while he offers significant business experience and brand-name recognition, offers very little in the way of actually getting a hyperloop built. Hyperloop is, in its current form, far closer to Virgin Galactic – which despite being announced almost ten years ago, has been hampered by setbacks and still seems at least months away from its inaugural flight – than Virgin Trains.
And actually building a hyperloop still faces enormous, potentially insurmountable challenges. Challenges like: for a Hyperloop to work, it needs huge stretches of level and flat land. Elon Musk’s original vision set out a case of a tube resting on pylons running along highway routes, though conventional wisdom has now accepted this was an insane idea, hence the focus of both Musk and VHO on tunneling. Tunneling huge distances right now is unfeasibly expensive, which would eliminate the low-cost element of Hyperloop’s initial appeal, failing an order-of-magnitude improvement in the efficiency of tunneling boring machines. (In short: for Hyperloop One to succeed, the Boring Company or another has to first.)
The tunneling problem is also a problem for capacity. If hyperloop systems were ever to replace conventional trains, the biggest concern isn’t necessarily speed but the number of passengers it can carry within the system at peak times. Musk’s proposal to make tunnels cheaper is to dig smaller ones, and send electric cars jetting through them on sleds – but a car holds four people, and a metro system hundreds at a time.
Then there’s the myriad safety and zoning regulations, the cost of land acquisition, testing, design – you know, building something a human can safely ride in – before we can even start talking about actual hyperloops zipping between London and Edinburgh, or Russia and Chinese sea ports. In short: while Richard Branson might claim a hyperloop is two to four years away, let’s not forget that not too long ago startups in the sector were promising passenger systems by 2018.
Still: while skeptics remain, there’s widespread belief in the transport industry that a hyperloop could in theory work in some form. And if that is the case, Branson’s backing – plus Musk’s return to his initial idea – means the hype in hyperloop isn’t going to die down any time soon.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
