Hyperloop One aims to transform travel

Global Business

Hyperloop One aims to transform travel

U.S. transportation company, Hyperloop One, is looking to revolution travel with with its unique tube system and is holding a competition to find the best route for its potentially transformative method of transportation.

CGTN’s Hendrik Sybrandy reports.

“It’s a vehicle propelled by an electric motor in a vacuum tube and it glides for hundreds of miles with minimal amount of energy and it goes at airline speeds very smoothly,” Bruce Upbin, Hyperloop One V.P., Strategic Communications explained0.

American states and countries around the world are looking for better ways to move people and things.

“[The U.S. has] an interstate system that was designed in the 50’s, built in the 60’s for a population in the 1980’s that they thought would be about three million people in Colorado,” Shailen Bhatt, executive director for the Colorado department of transportation said.

Upbin said the system, outlined by inventor Elon Musk in 2013, needs a home – a place to get these electromagnetically levitated pods off the ground. After an open call for proposals, 35 semifinalists from every continent remain in the Hyperloop One Global Challenge, each offering Hyperloop routes, including the one from Denver’s airport to Greeley, Colorado.

Upbin said today’s real world is hampered by congestion and spotty infrastructure. He said this technology could bring cities closer together and dramatically improves business, provided countries fund it and engineering and land use problems are overcome. But, he said the first Hyperloop system could be in operation by 2020.