Hyperloop: the fifth mode of transport that inspired a movement, then a bankruptcy
In 2013 Elon Musk published an open-source design for pods gliding on air bearings through low-pressure tubes, likening it to a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table. Student teams and startups piled in, but Hyperloop One, a leading company, shut down on 31 December 2023.
Speaking at a Santa Monica event run by Pando Daily in July 2012, Musk first floated the idea, promising transport immune to weather, free of collisions, twice as fast as a plane and able to store energy for round-the-clock running. Engineers from Tesla and SpaceX modelled it from late 2012, and the Hyperloop Alpha white paper appeared on 22 August 2013, sketching a line that would largely follow Interstate 5 between greater Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
The alpha design put pressurised capsules on air bearings inside low-pressure tubes, raised on columns or buried in tunnels, driven by linear induction motors and axial compressors. Unlike classic vactrains, it relied on residual air in the tube for lift and fan propulsion, though many later projects under the hyperloop name stayed closer to vactrain principles. Some transport analysts argued the cost estimates were billions of dollars too low.
SpaceX announced a 1-mile test track beside its Hawthorne facility on 15 June 2015 and ran pod competitions there. By that November, with dozens of student teams involved, the Wall Street Journal declared the movement bigger than its founder. A Technical University of Munich pod set a record of 463 kilometres an hour in July 2019, and Virgin Hyperloop ran the first human trial in November 2020, hitting 172 kilometres an hour in Las Vegas.
The HYPERLOOP trademark, covering high-speed transport of goods in tubes, went to SpaceX on 4 April 2017 and later passed to The Boring Company. A European standardisation effort released a draft standard in 2023, and other companies continue development despite Hyperloop One's collapse.
Source: Hyperloop
