Hyperloop pod system will offer trips from Abu Dhabi to Dubai in 15 minutes
▶ Chief of the futuristic company says talks are on with several countries
Commuters in Dubai were given the first glimpse of a new transport system that will, it is claimed, whisk them to Abu Dhabi in less than 15 minutes.
As part of UAE Innovation Week, the Road and Transportation Authority is displaying a full-scale model of the Hyperloop pod that is designed to reach speeds of well over 1,000 kilometres an hour.
Propelled in a vacuum tube with magnets, the new route is proposed by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop One company, which has announced a similar project in India to run between Mumbai and Pune.
In 2016, Virgin Hyperloop secured US$50 million (Dh183.62m) in initial funding from Dubai-based DP World and Caspian Venture Capital. It envisages having a prototype running by 2020.
Mr Branson, whose business interests include Virgin Airways and the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip One, joined Hyperloop One as chairman in December.
This week the chief executive of Virgin Hyperloop, Rob Lloyd, talked up the chances of the project’s success.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Mr Lloyd said that his company had spent a year working with the RTA to examine costs, ticket prices, likely passenger loads and the best routes.
Discussions had been “very productive” he said.
The high-speed pods would run overground for most of the route, Mr Lloyd said, and then in tunnels to reach each of the city centres.
“Our strategy in the Emirates and with the RTA is to complement the tremendous investments that are being made in infrastructure,” Mr Lloyd said.
He was less specific about the eventual cost of the 150 kilometre transport link. The Hyperloop concept was originally developed by billionaire Elon Musk, who proposed a route between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which he believed could be built for $11m per 1.6km.
Based on a company presentation, Forbes reported in October 2016 that the Dubai to Abu Dhabi route would cost $4.8 billion, or $52m for every 1.6km of track.
Estimating the eventual cost is difficult because the Hyperloop is a new and untested technology.
Virgin Hyperloop has built a short test track in Nevada, sending unmanned pods so far up to 386kph, although still slower than the fastest highspeed trains.
Major construction projects are also notorious for running over budget.
The Channel Tunnel, which runs between the United Kingdom and France, ran $12bn, or 80 per cent, over budget, while the Big Dig underground road network in Boston, Massachusetts, exceeded planned costs by $13bn, or 220 per cent.
Virgin Hyperloop says it envisages financing for its projects to come from partnerships between governments and the private sector.
“I’m not worried about investors; I’m not worried about funding this company. I’m actually excited by the growing momentum,” Mr Lloyd said.
“We have governments around the world approaching us today interested in the huge economic impact that this technology delivers.”
Virgin Hyperloop One, the futuristic transportation concept inspired by Elon Musk, expects to double money it has raised from investors that may include pension and sovereign wealth funds who will help anchor agreements in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Europe, its chief executive said.
“We are continuing to talk to investors around the world, we continue to see those investors as having strategic alignment to the company’s next threeyear phase of commercialising the technology and actually building the version that will be deployed,” Rob Lloyd told The National.
The company, which welcomed billionaire businessman Sir Richard Branson as its chairman in December, has already topped the $245 million it had raised from investors. DP World and Russia’s Caspian Venture Capital together pledged an additional $50m in the same month. Other investors include Russia’s Summa Group, France’s SNCF, and American’s GE Ventures.
“Over the next coming years, we would probably think of doubling that. That’s very realistic. We are in discussions as to how to continue that momentum,” Mr Lloyd said when asked about raising additional financing.
“The Saudi government could be a potential investor. We have had discussions with the minister of transport in Saudi Arabia. We are investigating the potential economic impact, the potential to create a manufacturing opportunity in alignment with Vision 2030.”
In October, when Saudi Arabia announced plans to build a $500 billion futuristic investment zone on the Red Sea coast called Neom, Mr Lloyd said the kingdom’s Vision 2030 and the technology of hyperloop increased the potential for collaboration. Four months on, the prospect of working together appears to be gathering pace.
Discussions include potential projects within the Arab world’s largest economy as it vies to cultivate a manufacturing and logistics industry as well as potentially linking the kingdom with major cities in the UAE.
“A hyperloop network that runs from Jeddah to Riyadh, from Abu Dhabi to Dubai as a backbone from the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea is an amazing opportunity and would transform the potential movement of goods and the mobility of people and have a dramatic impact on the economic development and continued growth in the region,” Mr Lloyd said. “We are in the process of examining those corridors that would make sense. ”
DP World chairman Sultan bin Sulayem, who sits on the board of Virgin Hyperloop, and Dubai’s Roads and Transportation Authority, are both in talks with the company. They are assessing the feasibility of a project that would deploy train-like capsules that float on air and travel at high speeds of up to 1,127kph through a low-pressure tube.
Yesterday, the company debuted a prototype pod potentially capable of shuttling 14 passengers from Dubai to Abu Dhabi in 12 minutes.
“This is the culmination of the first phase of our collaboration and partnership with the RTA,” Mr Lloyd said. “Now we’re looking at the second stage of that collaboration. You’ll hear more about that in the next weeks.”
The company is now aggressively pursuing its goal of realising the first commercialisation of its technology by 2019.
This month marked a milestone for the company as it signed an agreement to potentially connect the Indian city of Pune with Mumbai, in a multi-billion-dollar 140km hyperloop. The area is populated by 26 million people and 100 million cars a year drive across.
The proposed hyperloop in India will reduce travel time between the two cities to 25 minutes from three hours. The initial stage, which entails a feasibility study, is three years while the time to complete the project is seven – half the amount of time to complete a rail project.
India is on track to be the first place where hyperloop is likely to be commercialised. The framework agreement lays out the entire process to move from a feasibility study to the production phase, looking at financing and operation of a hyperloop in the next six to seven years.
The first part of that route would be constructed by 2021.
“India is one of the largest opportunities because of its congested transportation systems and our ability to leapfrog,” Mr Lloyd said.
The European Union is in talks with the company about potentially deploying a hyperloop framework on the continent, where the rail network can be fragmented without a single regulatory standard.
“We are looking at where could we create that system that would become the test and regulatory approval area,” Mr Lloyd said.
In addition to discussions with the EU headquarters in Brussels, he added, the company is “in talks with several countries”.