“Hyperloop is dead.”
That was the prevailing feeling (and, certainly, the headline) when Hyperloop One ceased operations in December 2023.
The dream was over. The concept of hyperloop — trains “flying” by pressurized tubes, capturing from one metropolis to the following at 700 mph — was completed.
Or was it?
Arguably the principle participant within the crowded hyperloop area, Hyperloop One — which had beforehand seen funding from the Virgin Group based by Richard Branson — couldn’t stability the books.
Yet practically two years on, in different components of the world, hyperloop tasks are ongoing.
A handful of corporations in China and Europe are engaged on the expertise, whereas the European Union is backing analysis on a challenge that hopes to open its first line in a little bit greater than a decade.
Of course, this may be pie within the sky. Anybody planning a hyperloop line faces an uphill battle of funding, constructing the infrastructure wanted, and the constraints of easy physics. Many within the rail trade stay skeptical that hyperloop may very well be something greater than a pipe dream.
But these engaged on the tech nonetheless consider they might have us all hurtling alongside in high-speed tubes — maybe underground or above floor by a tube supported by stilts — inside a technology or two.
So how did the concept crash and burn — and will it rise once more from the flames?
While high-speed rail propels vacationers throughout the globe at a whole lot of miles per hour, engineers have been dreaming for greater than a century of reaching aircraft-level speeds with out having to take off.
Over the many years, all method of extraordinary applied sciences have been proposed to achieve speeds that typical trains can’t match. Magnetic levitation, air currents, jet-propelled monorails and vacuum tubes have all been touted as “the future of travel.” Yet to this point not one has managed to dislodge conventional metal wheels on metal rails because the world’s most effective methodology of mass transit.
But might the important thing to super-fast rail lie within the nineteenth century? In the 1800s in Manhattan, one daring inventor, Alfred Beach, designed a large pneumatic tube to run beneath Broadway. Like a scaled-up model of the vacuum tube supply techniques in shops and hospitals, it will have used air strain to shoot passengers in sealed capsules up and down the island at excessive pace.
Sound acquainted? In 2013, Elon Musk proposed a type of transport referred to as hyperloop — basically trains in vacuum tubes able to whisking vacationers from New York City to Washington, D.C., in simply half-hour.
Musk’s idea married magnetic levitation (maglev) expertise, already in use in Asia, with low-pressure vacuum tubes to scale back drag and turbulence. The end result? Speeds of as much as 760 mph, theoretically — utilizing far much less vitality than excessive pace trains or open-air maglev trains, and working in close to silence.
Musk’s idea — which he intentionally didn’t patent — instantly sparked curiosity throughout the globe. Hyperloop wasn’t simply seen as an improve to high-speed rail; individuals thought it might change air journey, too. While many had been cautious about its feasibility, buyers around the globe jumped on the bandwagon, and by 2017, 35 routes had been proposed in 17 international locations.
Hyperloop One, the principle participant, acquired an enormous increase in 2017 when Virgin joined as an funding associate and the corporate rebranded as Virgin Hyperloop, with Richard Branson becoming a member of its board of administrators. This involvement helped it safe greater than $400 million in funding, however that wasn’t sufficient to forestall Virgin from pulling out 5 years later. Reverting to its unique title, Hyperloop One subsequently determined to deal with carrying cargo in unmanned pods, earlier than giving up for good.
Meanwhile Musk announced in 2022 that his Boring Company would try to construct a working hyperloop “in the coming years.” However, to this point it seems to be concentrating on different tasks, from collaborations with Amtrak to the Las Vegas Loop, which is working autonomous Teslas by tunnels within the metropolis. The firm didn’t reply to a request for remark from NCS.
Twelve years since Musk first proposed the idea, and regardless of tens of millions of {dollars} being invested in advertising and marketing and improvement by the varied corporations which have labored on the expertise, the concept of hyperloop as a transportation possibility is nonetheless largely theoretical. In truth, many commentators stay deeply skeptical about it.
“Hyperloop is unworkable,” says rail professional and writer Christian Wolmar. “The infrastructure it wants can be amazingly costly to construct and it could possibly’t ship the capability to compete with high-speed railways or airways.
“It doesn’t integrate with existing transport modes, the infrastructure required to reach city centers would cause intolerable noise and disruption,” he mentioned of the development course of.
“And there are doubts over vitality prices, capability and passenger security if one thing goes unsuitable at such excessive speeds.
“Musk and Branson pulled out because the business case doesn’t stack up — the economics of it just don’t work.”
While not even gamers like Musk and Branson have to this point been in a position to make hyperloop viable, the dream continues. A handful of corporations around the globe are nonetheless engaged on making the tech a actuality. Rail-friendly Europe seems to be the brand new hyperloop hub, with 4 corporations devoted to it.
Roel van de Pas is managing director of considered one of them: Rotterdam-based Hardt Hyperloop. He is satisfied that hyperloop is the lacking hyperlink for railway expertise and the one “actionable, sustainable solution to replace short-haul air travel” over distances larger than 300 miles, or 500 kilometers.
“It’s 90% more efficient than air travel, operational expenses and maintenance costs are much lower than conventional high-speed railways and, as an enclosed, autonomous system, it’s not affected by external factors such as bad weather or strikes,” he says.
While earlier advocates took an aggressive stance that maybe irritated many within the rail trade, van de Pas sees it otherwise, calling it “just another form of rail transport.”
“It doesn’t replace, it complements railways,” he says. “Conventional rail is the best solution at urban and regional level and high-speed works at distances of 200-300 miles. Hyperloop can make rail work at the continental level. In fact, it could be the savior of inter-city travel.”
So who is persevering with with the hyperloop dream? The European Union, for a begin. Europe’s Hyperloop Development Program (HDP) is a public-private partnership backed by EU funding and the non-public sector.
HDP’s imaginative and prescient is to have the primary set of commercially viable hyperloop traces open by 2035-40, adopted by a route community by 2050. It estimates {that a} 15,000-mile community linking 130 of Europe’s main cities might shift 66% of short-haul flight passengers to hyperloop by 2050, saving between 113 million and 242 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Core community hubs can be scattered throughout the continent from London to Berlin, Madrid to Belgrade, and Sofia to Athens, whereas loops would serve the Iberian Peninsula, the Baltic States and Scandinavia, the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe. The value? A cool 981 billion euros, or $1.1 trillion, in response to HDP estimates.
That doesn’t embody the pods, which might be provided by exterior corporations like Hardt Hyperloop, whose proposed 80-foot pods would carry as much as 40 passengers, working simply seconds aside on point-to-point routes equivalent to London to Stockholm. “Off-ramps” would permit pods to serve numerous different locations equivalent to Amsterdam and Hamburg alongside the core route. It claims that this might carry as much as 20,000 passengers per hour in every path.
Is it simply fantasy? In September 2025, Hardt announced that it had efficiently developed “track switching” — permitting pods to transition simply between tubes to achieve completely different locations. It’s an operational necessity that has lengthy been considered a “tech killer” for hyperloop, so a functioning system would overcome one of many main obstacles for the expertise.
In current months the corporate has additionally improved its take a look at car, boosting thrust by 50% and decreasing bogie weight by 45% to speed up from zero to 53mph in round 450 ft. This makes it the primary firm on the earth to make verifiable progress on bringing hyperloop to life.
“We’ve proved we can do it and make it scalable,” says van de Pas. “The next step is to develop a longer integrated test track where everything — switches, stations, docking-undocking, power systems, et cetera — can be validated.”
Meanwhile, these behind the EU-backed HDP challenge are hoping to have a full-scale take a look at monitor of as much as 3 miles operational by the top of 2029, adopted by a 20-30 mile twin-tube “Living Lab” which might replicate all facets of day-to-day operation and public service, slated to be up and working by 2034.
Elsewhere, Hyperloop Italia is investing in an illustration line between Venice and Padua costing as much as €800 million ($929 million) which may very well be ready by 2029, whereas Germany, Spain, India and China are additionally investigating trial routes to ascertain the viability of the expertise.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen added assist on the highest degree in September 2024, in her mission letter to incoming sustainable transport and tourism commissioner, Apostolos Tzitzikostas. “I… want Europe to take the lead on the innovation and transportation of the future,” she wrote, asking him to “propose a strategy for the promotion and development of cutting-edge technologies such as hyperloop technologies, including a timetable and an investment strategy.”
Tzitzikostas added in an EU hearing two months later: “I want the European Union to be the place where new ideas are developed, tested and rapidly brought to the market,” citing Hyperloop among the many concepts to prioritize.
While curiosity within the United States might have waned, the EU sees hyperloop as a strategic expertise the place it could possibly turn out to be a world chief with constructive implications for the continent’s financial system and autonomy from China and the USA.
Hyperloop isn’t the one super-fast rail tech in improvement. Maglev — quick for magnetic levitation — is one expertise that makes use of excessive powered magnets to maneuver autos with out making contact with the bottom. Vehicles journey alongside a guideway utilizing magnets to create each carry and propulsion, vastly decreasing friction and reaching speeds of as much as 375 mph.
Like hyperloop, this isn’t a brand new concept. The maglev precept was mooted within the 1910s, but it surely wasn’t till the late Nineteen Forties that British engineer Eric Laithwaite was in a position to develop the primary working mannequin of a linear induction motor. LIMs are successfully a traditional rotary motor lower open and unrolled to generate linear movement — and a vital a part of maglev expertise.
Unlike hyperloop, maglev expertise is already in service, primarily in Asia. Japan has been a world chief for greater than 50 years, setting quite a few world data. The Central Japan Railway Company’s present experimental prepare, L0, holds the world report for a passenger prepare at 375mph on the Yamanashi Maglev Test Line west of Tokyo. When working commercially, it should function at as much as 314 mph.
L0 depends on super-conducting alloy coils cooled to an astonishing -452 levels Fahrenheit, or -267 Celsius. The magnetic coils are used for each propulsion and navigation, lifting the prepare off its wheels and firing it alongside the guideway with unbelievable precision and acceleration.
The Yamanashi take a look at middle types a part of the Chuo Shinkansen, a brand new 272-mile railway being constructed between Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. Greenlit in 2011, the primary section from Tokyo to Nagoya was initially deliberate to open in 2027, however building issues and large value overruns have pushed that again to 2034 on the earliest. The extension to Osaka by way of Nara ought to comply with 5 years later.
Difficulties over buying land and staggering prices — the challenge is anticipated to value greater than $80 billion — have lengthy made the Chuo Shinkansen controversial, however it should cut back journey occasions between Tokyo and Nagoya from 87 minutes to 40, and slash the 319-mile Tokyo-Osaka journey from 2.5 hours to 67 minutes.
China is the opposite important participant in the case of maglev expertise (it additionally has a hyperloop-focused firm). The nation sees maglev as complementary to its common high-speed rail community, with the potential to outpace air journey on the busiest inter-city corridors equivalent to Beijing-Shanghai.
While maglevs have been proposed over a few years within the US, UK, Italy, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, India, Iran, Taiwan and Hong Kong, only some short-distance traces have ever come to fruition, largely due to excessive building prices, vitality prices, lack of connectivity with present rail networks, inflexibility and opposition to intrusive elevated tracks marching throughout the panorama.
And therein lies the issue for these various applied sciences. While they might be sooner on paper, they merely can’t but match present rail networks’ unbeatable mixture of excessive common speeds, big people-moving capability, value, compatibility with present tracks and city-center hubs.
However, if Europe continues to push the boundaries of hyperloop tech and Japan and China full their maglev traces over the following twenty years, flying with out wings might turn out to be an on a regular basis actuality for tens of millions of vacationers around the globe.