When Elon Musk proposed his wild idea for the Hyperloop almost four years ago, he billed it as an unbelievably cool way to get from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. But the first place to adopt the futuristic tech might in fact be … Slovakia.
Now, the phrase “part of the former Soviet bloc” may not bring to mind the ideal setting for a revolution in transportation tech. But the country’s position as one of Europe’s fastest-growing economies makes it a natural fit, says Dirk Ahlborn, who leads Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and sees the system carrying passengers and freight between between Bratislava and Vienna or Budapest in 10 minutes or less.1 “I personally think it’s a great place for it,” he says.
For anyone who hasn’t heard, Hyperloop is a conceptual high-speed transportation system that would fling people and cargo across great distances at triple-digit velocities, through tubes with close to zero air pressure inside. It works something like the pneumatic tubes banks once used. Yes, it sounds like science fiction, but several companies are pursuing it (Musk basically floated the idea, and invited people to run with it), and appear to be making progress.
We would love to see LA to San Francisco, but our primary goal is to build the Hyperloop.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies isn’t your typical tech startup. It has just two full-time employees. The real work is done by more than 500 engineers with day jobs at places like NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX. They spend their free time working on Hyperloop in exchange for stock options because they get to work on something that could genuinely revolutionize transportation. In August, Ahlborn announced partnerships with Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum and global engineering design firm Aecom, which suggests the idea is attracting resources from companies with stockholders to answer to. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies plans to start building a prototype in California later this year.
So if California works for the test site, why not for the real thing? It would certainly be helpful. Traveling between SF and LA requires taking a 12-hour Amtrak ride, a six hour (on a good day) drive, or an hour-long flight that requires braving traffic to and from an airport and dealing with the TSA. And it’s not like that high-speed train we’ve been promised is coming anytime soon. In short, people would go fully bonkers for a Hyperloop route.
But it’s not feasible, at least not now. The same political battles that have pushed high-speed rail two years (and counting) behind schedule would certainly ensnarl Hyperloop.
Land is expensive (making right-of-way acquisition tricky), earthquakes are likely (raising questions about the safety of an unproven technology), and you can bet there would be no end of NIMBYism. All of which makes California a terrible place for beta testing.
Ahlborn’s competitor, which is called Hyperloop Technologies (there’s something of an “Original Ray’s Pizza” thing going on here) is taking a similar approach. CEO Rob Lloyd wants to have three working Hyperloops in place by 2020, and isn’t talking about connecting California’s big metropoles. He hasn’t specified any potential sites, but says a combination of government support, regulatory approval, and available capital are prerequisites.
“We would love to see LA to San Francisco, but our primary goal is to build the Hyperloop,” Ahlborn said in December, 2014. There’s no point in taking on tough political battles when other places are waving the technology in. Ahlborn says Slovakia has promised to handle securing land for the project, and various government officials seem psyched. “A transportation system of this kind would redefine the concept of commuting,” Vazil Hudak, the country’s minister of economy, said in an announcement.
The first stage of the Slovakia Hyperloop will run within Bratislava and cost $200-300 million, Ahlborn says. Connections to Vienna and Budapest would follow. He hasn’t pulled together the funding, but wants to see stage one built by 2020—nine years before California’s high-speed rail would be finished.
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