How the Hyperloop One could revolutionise the way we travel

“A major train station needs big platforms where 800 people can line up at the side,” says Lloyd. “Hyperloop will have a circular portal and multiple underground levels.”

TIMETABLES BE DAMNED

Hyperloop will be an on-demand service.

“A train arrives at a specific time, and if you miss that one, you have to wait,” says Lloyd. “Our idea is that we go point to point to a specific destination with a much smaller vehicle. When you combine the speed that the pod can travel with the point-to-point nature of the system, you shave off a load of time.” Short journey times could enable commuters to live in the north and work in the south.

RELAX: WE’LL STILL NEED CARS

Lloyd dismisses a suggestion that Hyperloop could replace the car entirely. We’ll still need to rely on “last-mile technologies” such as cars to take us from home to the Hyperloop terminal and then to work at the other end. Whether we actually own or drive that car is another matter. “It might be a ride sharing service, an autonomous car or your favourite BMW,” he says.

HYPERLOOP CAN GO UNDER OR OVER

Some schemes would be above ground, but Hyperloop One is also looking at digging. The tubes in which the pods travel are likely to be around five metres in diameter and “they are relatively quick and inexpensive to build compared with projects such as the Channel Tunnel,” says Lloyd. “We’re looking at a tunnel between Finland and Sweden underneath the Aland Islands, and one from Estonia to Finland that would be about 40 miles in length. It could be built for billions rather than tens and tens of billions.” Lloyd won’t put a specific price on a system’s build cost but says: “As an average, it will be two-thirds the price of highspeed rail at three times the speed.”

750MPH WON’T SCRAMBLE YOUR BREAKFAST

“The classic question we’re asked is: ‘What is it going to feel like?’,” says Lloyd. “It depends how fast you accelerate. If you want an exhilarating ride in a Tesla in Ludicrous mode, you just hit the accelerator as fast as you can and get a fair amount of g-force. That’s not what most people want in a transportation system. With the electric motor, we can generate very linear force, so we just lengthen the distance that we use to accelerate to get very gradual acceleration. We could make it feel like a highspeed elevator.”

WILL IT BE SAFE?

Blasting through a small tube at speeds of up to 750mph sounds fraught with risk, but Lloyd counters by saying: “It’s a controlled environment, so therefore we have fewer variables than you would experience when you get in a car or jump on a plane. We will be working extensively with regulators to certify the technology and make sure that everything is safe.” Hyperloop will have an autonomous control system – “the speed would preclude a human from being the decision maker” – but Lloyd admits some regulators might insist on a back-up human driver.

YOU COULD RIDE IN 2021

The goal for 2017 is to prove the technology and Hyperloop One is building a ‘DevLoop’ test facility in Las Vegas. It plans to select locations for the first systems in 2018 and construction will take place in late 2018 and throughout 2019.