Not the Musk company. His Boring company still going.
“Hyperloop One was founded in 2014 and raised more than $400 million, largely from United Arab Emirates shipping company DP World and British billionaire Richard Branson.”
“having failed to win any contract to build a working hyperloop”
Doesn’t sound like a great business anyway. He has more interesting things to pay attention to. Maybe he should.
Doesn’t Boring Co have a contract to build a line from Las Vegas airport to the strip? I think it uses EVs.
There is also discussion of doing that in Chicago too. Airport to downtown.
An interesting concept but so far not a barn burner.
I think the main thing is to minimize air resistance by running the cars in a vacuum.
IIRC, the competitive advantage of the Boring Company is their smaller diameter tunnels.
DB2
Yes, and because hyperloop tunnels are most efficient when minimally sized. But they know that is not enough. The crux push of the Boring Company was to achieve a breakthrough in time and efficiency of the underground boring process.
The most interesting proposal to me was for a freight only hyperloop connecting Los Angeles Harbor docks on a loop route with a few interior Los Angeles collection and break out points, but most critically with various rail and trucking depots to the north south and east of Los Angeles. The cost would be quite low compared to carrying humans because the safety margins of the vacuum would be far more easily achieved. The economic effect would be transformative for the hopelessly traffic gridlocked harbor, and the routes could make use of existing flood channel right of ways, unused railroad right of ways, and some serious tunneling to connect them all.
Still possible, but the tea leaves are not looking good. Those needed tunneling tech breakthroughs seem not to have shown up.
d fb
At 750 mph the 250 mi trip from St. Louis to Kansas City takes 20 minutes.
No need to have two tracks. One can go back and forth making a round trip every hour. This gives major savings compared to the normal.
Why not extend the monorail instead? They already have the trains, and the existing track covers much of the strip.
Steve
There is something similar in Switzerland now. Not high speed, but dedicated to freight-only. Currently having problems due to a tunnel collapse that will take a long time to fix (bored through a mountain).
I think there is some blurring of boundaries here. AFAIK, the Los Vegas tunnel and other projects of the Boring company do not involve vacuum and they use conventional vehicles on a plain surface. Hyperloop uses the vacuum, mag-lev, and special vehicles.
Seems like a fairly minor business. Perhaps that’s why Musk doesn’t seem to be paying it any attention. Truth is, it’s irrelevant until tunneling gets significantly faster.
And, really, for Musk it is just practice for Mars. Another technology that needs to be really good by the time it is needed there.
Here’s the Boring Company page describing their Las Vegas Project (Vegas Loop — The Boring Company).
It’s about EV taxis driving through tunnels, eventually without drivers. The project has barely begun, but is fairly ambitious. Take a look at the map. “Clark County and the City of Las Vegas have approved a total of 68 miles of tunnel and 93 stations for the Vegas Loop.”
-IGU-