Back in 2013, when Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO Elon Musk revealed his abstract plans for a “speed-of-sound” transportation system, he described it as “the love child of a three way between the Concorde, a railgun, and an air-hockey table.”
He then posed a challenge — an open-source competition for anyone interested:
“Create a 28-passenger solar-powered pod capable of levitating through a system of tubes almost at the speed of sound, with a one-way ticket price of $20 and a total building cost estimated at $6 billion.”
Musk was basically laughed off stage.
His vision of a 760 mph vacuum tube Hyperloop is a science fiction dream, right? There’s no way we could get from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes on the ground, right?
Wrong.
Tons of individuals and companies jumped on the opportunity to meet this challenge, most notably Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) and Hyperloop Technologies, Inc. (HTI).
I’m going to try to not confuse the two, but just for the record: a little creativity in company names is appreciated.
Anyway, the race is on right now to turn the Hyperloop into a real, viable form of transportation — first for freight cargo, then for human passengers.
Challenge: Accepted
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) is taking advantage of grassroots, crowd-collaboration strategies to see its Hyperloop model to fruition — and it’s working. Unlike its competitors, HTT has managed to keep costs down.
How?
The company doesn’t pay its employees.
Not even the CEO takes a paycheck.
Instead, HTT’s staff works part time — say, 10 to 15 hours per week — while still maintaining employment at their other, full-time jobs. In exchange, staff members receive a stake in the company.
Despite the absence of salaries, HTT has managed to attract some of the most talented and innovative minds available — minds that truly care about the field. They call themselves the Dream Team, and they can definitely back it up. There are engineers from Silicon Valley and SpaceX, researchers from NASA, and lawyers from Washington.
As the company grows, full-time teams are being formed — from Boeing, Harvard, and others. Although the company itself has no official connection to Elon Musk or Tesla, the majority of employees have a history of working with the visionary CEO.
The project has Musk written all over it, but the billionaire is only supporting from behind the scenes because he’s too busy figuring out how to colonize other planets. (And I thought my life was hectic.)
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies just recently secured a plot of land in California, where it plans to break ground on a test track as soon as this year.
HTT’s CEO Dirk Ahlborn has openly expressed his excitement for the company’s growth, which he expects to include an IPO in the next few months.
Putin’ Technology to Work
The Hyperloop race is definitely still in the infancy stage, but it’s rapidly heating up as the technology gains both public and private attention from…
…Wait for it…
Russia.
Yes, you read that correctly.
It looks like Russia (a country not exactly known for high-tech industry) is jumping on the cutting-edge technology bandwagon. Investors from both the private and public sector are showing “significant interest” in HTT’s project, according to COO Bibop Gresta. The company is already in talks with a Russian investor, according to announcements at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“We’re heading at the PPP, Private-public partnership. Usually that’s our model: we involve a private investor and then we ask the state to basically be involved. But it’s a profitable business, for the first time we have a system that is actually able to produce money, so it’s not on the shoulder of all the citizens.”
Russian investors (who choose to remain anonymous for now) intend to use the tech to establish a high-speed connection between Moscow and St. Petersburg, reducing the travel time from four hours to 35 minutes.
Even more impressive is the low cost of the Hyperloop design. Estimated to cost 10 times less than any existing transportation system, the Hyperloop will run on wind, solar, and geothermal energy and will still reach faster speeds than anything available today. The Hyperloop also possesses the benefit of not interfering with existing infrastructure — it can be mounted on pylons, which enables relatively easy planning and building.
According to experts at HTT, Russia is a perfect candidate for Hyperloop transportation. With such a vast territory and large (but spread out) population, the country will reap the most benefit from speedier transport and economic exchange.
But it gets better.
At the risk of sounding like a rumor-monger, there have also been whispers of a secret agreement between Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk to create an even larger Hyperloop — one that will connect the globe:
Let’s just consider the potential impact of this project if it is, in fact, true.
We would witness a complete economic overhaul. (Imagine how life would change in a place like Nome, Alaska.)
{$custom_ptt_jessica_signoff}