Ten years ago, Elon Musk presented a white paper on a new transportation system called hyperloop. It consisted of placing passenger and cargo capsules inside a large low-pressure pipe that could travel at speeds higher than those of commercial airplanes, at more than 1,000 kilometers per hour. The controversial businessman published the project, but did not participate in its development. He offered it as free hardware, so anyone could do it. The first of the companies, and the most important due to the investment capital received, was Hyperloop One, which for a time was Virgin Hyperloop One when Richard Branson got involved, but last week, the company announced its closure, something that many confused with the end of this train of the future. Nothing is further from reality.
Hyperloop is still alive. Last October, the Hyperloop Association was founded, made up of seven companies, among which was still the American Hyperloop One, in addition to HyperloopTT, also from the United States and led by the Spanish Andrés de León as CEO, along with several European companies among the which highlights the Spanish Zeleros.
Hyperloop One received investments of 450 million dollars, but it was always involved in controversy. After agreeing with Adif in 2018 to create a research and development center in Andalusia, the American company backed out two years later and left the planned facility in Antequera (Málaga) in the lurch. In 2016, one of his co-founders, Brogan BamBrogan, left the company after explaining that someone had left a rope with a noose on his office chair and filed a complaint.
In the almost ten years since Musk presented the hyperloop (2014), there have been numerous initiatives to develop these very high-speed trains. In addition to the United States, where HyperloopTT is now located, and Canada, with Transpod, Europe seems to be one of the parts of the world most interested in the development of the new means of transportation.
In April of this year, the European Parliament positioned itself in favor of incorporating hyperloop in article 44 of the TEN-T regulation, which marks the development of a trans-European transport network. Next year, the European Parliament is expected to receive a legislative proposal to regulate hyperloop. The European interest in having a pioneering regulatory framework as soon as possible is also justified because this technology can be developed in countries like China, whose regulatory process does not need to go through so many filters.
The European Hyperloop Center that has begun to be installed in Veendam, in the province of Groningen (Netherlands) should have a track three to five kilometers long – last November the first 420 meters were completed, installed in just two months – open to technology companies for testing during 2024. The planned investment to complete the center is 200 million euros.
The European Hyperloop Center will begin testing in this first phase at 75 kilometers per hour to test the technology. The length of the pipe is not enough. The second phase, which will be developed with a pipeline that will already be 2.6 kilometers long, will begin testing passenger and freight capsules at 700 kilometers per hour. Closer to the final goal and at a speed never achieved so far in any of the projects in development.
Europe is very interested in leading this new transport system because it could form a large network that would interconnect its relatively close cities, in times that would exceed those of the plane with a much lower energy cost and CO2 emissions. Solar panels can be installed along the entire hyperloop pipeline – in fact, all projects foresee this – to achieve very low energy costs, up to a tenth depending on the transport system with which it is compared. The Rotterdam City Council, for example, has commissioned a study to incorporate this fast train into its metropolitan network.
It is no coincidence that the constitution of the Hyperloop Association took place in October in Brussels. The train of the future, if it passes, will be through Europe.
