Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s dream of creating a Hyperloop – a high-speed method of transportation – is one step closer to being a reality after a California company purchased land to build a test model.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a crowdfunded company, is planning to create a full-scale model of a Hyperloop,
built with plans that Musk has made available, The Verge reported. Musk is also building a test track in Texas, but it is scaled down.
A five-mile stretch in Quay Valley will be home to HTT’s planned Hyperloop.
“This installation will allow us to demonstrate all systems on a full scale and immediately begin generating revenues for our shareholders through actual operations," The Verge quoted CEO Dirk Ahlborn from a statement.
Although Musk’s plans, published in 2013, estimate that the Hyperloop speed can reach 760 miles per hour, HTT said its test track will have only five miles and top out at 200 miles per hour.
“It's not about speed," Ahlborn told The Verge. "There are a lot of other things that need to be optimized."
HTT needs to raise $100 million for the project; The Verge said all funding so far has come from crowdfunding on JumpStart Fund. Ahlborn told the website that the company plans an initial public offering under an open auction model.
In a 2013 blog post on the Tesla Motors website, Musk touted the Hyperloop for faster travel between cities. “The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion, the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart,” Musk wrote. “Around that inflection point, I suspect that supersonic air travel ends up being faster and cheaper. With a high enough altitude and the right geometry, the sonic boom noise on the ground would be no louder than current airliners, so that isn’t a showstopper. Also, a quiet supersonic plane immediately solves every long distance city pair without the need for a vast new worldwide infrastructure.”