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Imagine commuting in a capsule through a long tube, floating on magnetic fields. And doing that at the speed of 700 km/h.
This potential new form of mass transit is getting closer to becoming a reality, according to the Dutch company Hardt Hyperloop.
Hyperloop is a depressurised tube in which passenger-capsules can travel at an extreme speed thanks to reduced pressure.
This is an idea many engineers around the world have been working on since Elon Musk proposed it more than a decade ago. The Tesla and SpaceX boss said it could shuttle passengers the nearly 645 kilometres between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 30 minutes.
No one in the world has yet succeeded in commercialising it.
Dutch hyperloop developer Hardt says it has achieved significant improvements in the last 12 months.
Last year, the speed was 30km per hour. This year, engineers successfully increased it to 85 km per hour, reaching the maximum speed possible in the test tube.
”We have been doing lots of testing, over 700 test runs, improving our test platform, reducing the weight by over 45 per cent, increasing its lift capability by over 20 per cent,” Roel van de Pas, Managing Director of Hardt Hyperloop, said.
“We’ve increased the thrust, so the capacity to accelerate by some 50 per cent, and we’ve achieved speeds which are 200 per cent on top of what we could do before,” van de Pas added.
Eventually, they aim to have capsules speeding through tubes at speeds of up to 700 km per hour, potentially cutting down the travel time between Amsterdam and Paris to 45 minutes.
“It will change the society and the way of living and the way of working,” said Kees Mark, the managing director of the European Hyperloop Centre.
“On the other hand, sustainability is one of the main issues we have also proven in tests that you can transport with very low energy consumption,” Mark added.
Europe’s longest test track
The European Hyperloop Centre, in Veendam, northeast of the Netherlands, houses a 420 metre test tube, which is the longest hyperloop test track in Europe.
It’s made up of 34 separate sections, mostly 2.5 metres in diameter.
A vacuum pump sucks out the air to reduce the internal pressure, reducing drag, which allows capsules to travel at high speeds.
Mark added that hyperloop is more efficient than short-haul flights, high-speed rail, and freight trucks, but it will involve significant investment in infrastructure.
However, building a Hyperloop requires significant investment in infrastructure. Setting the technology to this point has not been easy, according to the Dutch developer.
Hardt hopes to conduct the first test with passengers on board by 2030.
“We’re also shifting our attention a little bit from the more fundamental questions to the more commercial questions, really making sure that those technologies are not just fit for technical feasibility,” said Roel van de Pas, the managing director of Hardt Hyperloop.
“But they also become optimised for commercial feasibility and certified products that we can really travel in, you and I, as real passengers. That’s the next plan”.
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Video editor • Roselyne Min