Hyperloop to shut down after Richard Branson sells stake
Matthew Field
Fri, 22 December 2023
Hyperloop One raised more than $450m and built a test track in the Nevada desert in the hope of cracking a new mode of transport - Virgin.com/PA
A US start-up that hoped to revolutionise public transport using 760-miles-per-hour hyperloop technology is shutting down, a year after Sir Richard Branson pulled his backing from the business.
Hyperloop One, which was trying to commercialise a new form of transport envisioned by billionaire Elon Musk, is planning to sell its assets and wind down its operations, Bloomberg reported.
In 2013, Mr Musk envisioned an alternative to high-speed rail and air travel that would see passengers whisked through vacuum-sealed tunnels in levitating pods. He had claimed the technology would cut the journey time from Los Angeles to San Francisco down to 30 minutes compared to almost six hours by car.
A number of start-ups had attempted to make the theory a reality. Hyperloop One raised more than $450m (£353m) in the effort, building a test track in the Nevada desert.
The company was rebranded as Virgin Hyperloop One in 2017. Sir Richard’s company took a stake in the business and hailed it as an “incredibly innovative and exciting new way to move people and things at airline speeds on the ground”.
But last year, The Telegraph revealed Virgin was stripping its branding from the hyperloop project and selling its minority stake in the venture.
The company was rebranded as Virgin Hyperloop One in 2017 after Sir Richard’s company took a stake in the business - Virgin.com/PA Wire
Despite completing a first test of its pod system in 2020 with human passengers, the company’s attempts to build hundreds of miles of tubes to connect cities around the world never got beyond its 500 metre test track.
Bloomberg reported that the employment contracts for Hyperloop One’s remaining staff will end on Dec 31. The company’s intellectual property will be transferred to Dubai shipping conglomerate DP World, which owns a majority stake in the business.
Engineering experts have repeatedly pointed out the concept suffers from major technical challenges that could prevent the idea ever becoming reality.
Several start-ups still harbour hopes of turning the theoretical technology into a reality. In Europe, Dutch company Hardt Hyperloop raised €12m (£10.4m) earlier this year to build a testing facility.
Hyperloop One did not respond to a request for comment.
Hyperloop One to Shut Down After Failing to Reinvent Transit
Sarah McBride
Thu, December 21, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Hyperloop One, the futuristic transportation company building tube-encased lines to zip passengers and freight from city to city at airplane-like speeds, is shutting down, according to people familiar with the situation.
Once a high-profile startup, Hyperloop One raised more than $450 million since its founding in 2014, according to PitchBook. It built a small test track near Las Vegas to develop its transportation technology, and for a time took the name Virgin Hyperloop One after Richard Branson’s Virgin invested. Virgin removed its branding after the startup decided last year to focus on cargo rather than people.
Now, the company has laid off most of its employees, and is trying to sell its remaining assets, including the test track and machinery, according to one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous discussing private information. In early 2022, the company employed more than 200 people. The business has also closed its Los Angeles office. The remaining workers, tasked with overseeing the asset sale, were told their employment will end on Dec. 31.
DP World, the Dubai-based conglomerate, has backed Hyperloop One since 2016 and owns a majority stake. The startup’s remaining intellectual property will be transferred to DP World, a person familiar with the situation said.
Through a spokesman, DP World declined to comment. Raja Narayanan, Hyperloop One’s acting chief executive officer, also didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Hyperloop One, formally known as Hyperloop Technologies, merged with a shell company this April, according to a document reviewed by Bloomberg. At that time, the value of shares in most classes was written down to zero cents, and the shareholders of the shell company became the only owners of Hyperloop One. At an all-hands meeting, employees were told that DP World orchestrated the transaction, according to one of the people.
The company had captured the public’s imagination since its founding in 2014, a year after Elon Musk released a white paper outlining a vision for hyperloop technology. The concept was a tantalizing promise of a new kind of transportation technology — and an end to traffic.
But the nascent industry stumbled, and Hyperloop One never won a contract to build a working hyperloop. The company also attracted plenty of attention for the wrong reasons. Co-founder Brogan BamBrogan once arrived at work to find a noose on his chair. And another co-founder, the venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, stepped aside after Bloomberg reported on sexual harassment allegations against him, which he denied. A one-time director, Ziyavudin Magomedov, was arrested in Moscow on charges of fraud and embezzlement unrelated to Hyperloop One. At the time, Magomedov’s lawyer said he was appealing the arrest.
Although no large-scale hyperloop has been built after years of effort, the concept continues to enchant entrepreneurs. Several hyperloop companies are at various stages of building protoypes, including Hardt Hyperloop, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc. and Swisspod Technologies.
Musk has promoted the field as well, creating a series of competitions for student-designed hyperloops and building a now-demolished test track. He also started Boring Co., a tunneling business that has pursued related technology.
Hyperloop’s loss is high-speed rail’s gain
Sean O'Kane
Fri, December 22, 2023
In 2013, Elon Musk published a white paper that teased the idea of zipping from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 35 minutes through a vacuum-sealed tube -- a system he called hyperloop. The idea “originated out of his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system,” according to his biographer Ashlee Vance.
Ten years later, the most high-profile startup that tried to follow in Musk’s footsteps -- Hyperloop One -- is closing its doors. And the news of its demise broke less than two weeks after the Biden administration announced $6 billion in funding for high-speed rail projects across California.
It’s a big win for public transit advocates, many of whom have spent decades stumping for not just high-speed rail, but better rail service overall. (Biden’s announcement also included funding for a slew of other rail projects around the country.) But it’s not a clean victory by any means.
For one thing, many cities and states were lulled by the hyperloop siren song and were subsequently left adrift. I still vividly remember reporting out a story in 2018 about the collapse of Arrivo (another hyperloop startup created by one of Hyperloop One’s co-founders) and calling Colorado’s Department of Transportation to ask about the company going under, only to realize on the call they had no idea it had happened.
Colorado was not alone. Hyperloop One once promised West Virginia that it would build a $500 million test and certification facility in the state. It also built a test track near Las Vegas where it did, briefly, move some people through a tube -- enough of an accomplishment, apparently, for then-CEO Jay Walder to claim it was the “first new form of mass transportation in over 100 years.”
Other hyperloop projects and companies remain, though largely outside of the United States. Thankfully this country was already building momentum back up for investing in its rail system, with a focus on faster trains.
The most high-profile effort is Brightline, a company that recently extended its existing service in Florida all the way to Orlando, allowing passengers to travel there from as far as Miami.
Brightline is also building what it calls “the nation’s first true high-speed rail network” between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. That project received $3 billion of the funding recently announced by the Biden administration, and is expected to break ground in early 2024.
Building high-speed rail will take more than just money. There are deeply rooted problems standing in the way stemming from years of deregulation. Projects of this size also struggle to stay on time and on budget. The other big recipient of the newly announced federal funding -- another $3 billion -- is a high-speed rail project slated to run the spine of California that was the original source of Musk’s ire.
Could high-speed rail’s revival run the risk of a rematch with the world’s richest man? Perhaps, though train fans can take solace in how distracted Musk has become since that 2013 white paper.
Besides, outside of a handful of engineering contests held by SpaceX, Musk only ever entertained his own hyperloop projects at a superficial level.
Musk once tweeted that he had “verbal govt approval” to build “an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop.” It was never built. In April 2022 he claimed his tunneling effort The Boring Company would “attempt to build a working hyperloop.” The following day the company tweeted “Hyperloop testing at full-scale begins later this year.” That also never happened.
Musk spent the last decade barely engaging with the hyperloop, essentially outsourcing his attempt to kill high-speed rail. With Hyperloop One's death casting a pall on that premise, it looks increasingly like the billionaire has a decision to make: Does he care enough to find the time to finish the job himself?
Hyperloop Ultra-High Speed Transport Is Hyper Dead
Logan Carter
Thu, December 21, 2023
NORTH LAS VEGAS, NV - MAY 11: People look at a demostration test sled after the first test of the propulsion system at the Hyperloop One Test and Safety site on May 11, 2016 in North Las Vegas, Nevada. The company plans to create a fully operational hyperloop system by 2020.
Hyperloop One is the company born to bring Elon Musk’s much hyped contention that it would be possible to engineer underground or above-ground virtually airless tubes to facilitate ultra-high speed mass transit to life. That dream now appears dead as the company has laid off most of its employees and is trying to sell its remaining assets.
As with many startups, Hyperloop One had a strong start with over $450 million in initial investment, but as the reality of building an entirely new form of transportation requiring uncharted logistics set in, the company destabilized. It was bought by Richard Branson’s Virgin in 2017, and then was surrounded in scandal up-to its recent demise. Bloomberg reports,
The Hyperloop ran a single test with passengers on its Nevada test track with dismal results. The pod, which was supposed to be operating at speeds in excess of 700 mph, achieved a top speed of 100 mph. Womp womp.
A Tesla Inc. electric vehicle drives through the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 3, 2022.
A Tesla Inc. electric vehicle drives through the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 3, 2022.
Elon did manage to build a kind of “Hyperloop” that remains alive and well, but is nothing like what was initially promised. Elon’s Hyperloop exists as a single-lane tunnel system that runs beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center that acts as an underground route for standard Tesla vehicles to ferry folks around the 4.6 million square-foot convention center. I have ridden the Tesla Hyperloop several times over my three years attending The SEMA Show and it is incredibly convenient, if a bit extra. This system was intended to expand beyond the convention center, though, which it has yet to do.
In other news, Japan’s bullet train continues to operate flawlessly and ferry nearly a million passengers around the country each day with virtually infallible punctuality and efficiency.
Jalopnik
High-speed transportation firm Hyperloop One to shut down - Bloomberg News
Reuters
Thu, December 21, 2023
FILE PHOTO: Journalists and guests look over tubes following a propulsion open-air test at Hyperloop One in North Las Vegas
(Reuters) - High-speed freight transportation company Hyperloop One will shut down, having failed to win any contract to build a working hyperloop, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday citing people familiar with the matter.
The Los-Angeles-based firm, which completed the world's first passenger ride on a super high-speed levitating pod system in 2020, will sell off its remaining assets, while the employment for its remaining employees will end on Dec. 31 this year, according to the report.
Hyperloop One did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
In a hyperloop system, which uses magnetic levitation to allow near-silent travel, a trip between New York and Washington would take just 30 minutes - twice as fast as a commercial jet flight and four times faster than a high-speed train.
Elon Musk had reignited interest in the technology in 2013 by setting out how a modern hyperloop system would work. His own tunneling enterprise, The Boring Company, is seeking to send passengers packed into pods through an intercity system of giant, underground vacuum tubes known as the hyperloop.
Hyperloop One was founded in 2014 and raised more than $400 million, largely from United Arab Emirates shipping company DP World and British billionaire Richard Branson.
(Reporting by Aatreyee Dasgupta and Bhanvi Satija in Bengaluru)
Elon Musk’s Much-Hyped Hyperloop One Is Shutting Down: Report
AJ McDougall
Thu, December 21, 2023
David Becker/Getty Images
Guess it didn’t live up to the hype. Hyperloop One, the chrome-plated pipe dream of a tube-transportation firm, is shutting down operations, according to Bloomberg News. The company is auctioning off its assets and laying off its workforce with an eye toward pushing its few remaining employees out the door on Dec. 31, insiders familiar with the matter told the outlet on Thursday. After that, all of its intellectual property will shift to majority stakeholder DP World, a Dubai port operator. It marks an ignoble ending for a once-buzzy startup based on tech dreamed up by Elon Musk. In 2013 he unveiled the open-source design for the hyperloop, a vacuum tube technology that promised to send passengers and cargo whizzing around the world. Hyperloop One, founded a year later, tinkered with Musk’s so-called “alpha paper” on the concept, raised $450 million, and built a small test track in the Nevada desert. But it never truly managed to get off the ground, with Bloomberg reporting that the company had failed to secure a contract to build a working model at scale.
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