Elon Musk’s The Boring Company announced that it is starting testing on its first full-scale high-speed Hyperloop transportation system.
The company might fulfill Musk’s vision for a new mode of transportation 10 years after unveiling it.
Back in 2013, Elon Musk released a white paper describing what he called the “Hyperloop,” a new mode of transportation consisting of building a near-hard vacuum environment in a tunnel or tube in order to move electric vehicles at high speeds more efficiently inside of them.
At the time, Musk put the idea out there and encouraged other businesses to run with it. Several companies were founded around the idea, but almost a decade later, there are still no commercial applications of the system – though there are a few prototypes out there.
Musk later founded The Boring Company (TBC) to improve tunnel boring technology in order to help reduce traffic.
The main applications of TBC’s tunnels have been “Loops,” which are similar to the Hyperloop without the low-pressure environment. The company is focusing on developing loops under cities, like its first commercial application in Las Vegas, but it has also been working on some proposals for Hyperloop systems to connect cities over longer distances.
After years of focusing on the more simple tunnel-based Loop concept, The Boring Company announced earlier this year that it plans to start testing its own Hyperloop system later this year.
The announcement was made after the company secured a massive $675 million round of funding.
Now The Boring Company announced over the weekend that it has started testing on its first “full-scale Hyperloop”:
The company didn’t confirm where this new Hyperloop test tube is located, but it looks like it could be in Texas based on the sky in those pictures. The Boring Company has a piece of land near Austin, where it is conducting some testing.
On its website under the “Hyperloop” project, the company still refers to “the 0.8 mile Hyperloop Test Track, or Hypertube” constructed by SpaceX in Hawthorne, but this is clearly not that as it fits a full-size car unlike the test track for the SpaceX hyperloop student competition.
Speaking of full-size cars, The Boring Company is putting a Tesla vehicle in the tube in those pictures, which is interesting considering the Hyperloop is expected to require special pressurized vehicles in order to work in a near-vacuum environment.
However, the startup doesn’t mention a low-pressure environment in its description of the Hyperloop on its website:
Hyperloop is an ultra-high-speed public transportation system in which passengers travel in autonomous electric pods at 600+ miles per hour. Boring Company tunnels support both Loop and Hyperloop systems.
The Boring Company has confirmed that it is currently working with “various local governments and private stakeholders” about developing hyperloop systems.
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