Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Hyperloop One officials call test of technology a landmark moment

Hyperloop One Sled Test

L.E. Baskow

Invited guests and media wander about one of the tubes following a Hyperloop One sled test at their facility in North Las Vegas on Wednesday, May 11, 2016.

Hyperloop One Sled Test

A Hyperloop One sled test has a successful run and is slowed by sand in the end at their facility in North Las Vegas on Wednesday, May 11, 2016. Launch slideshow »

Hyperloop One, racing to build a transportation platform that propels high-speed pods down pneumatic tubes, completed a test of its propulsion technology this morning in North Las Vegas.

On a strip of land in the sleepy Apex Industrial Park where the Los Angeles-based company is developing its product, Hyperloop One created an electromagnetic field that propelled the structural frame for a pod down a track at about 105 miles per hour.

The test, before shaded stands of company employees, Nevada officials and media, lasted only a few seconds, but executives hailed it as a landmark moment for the California tech company.

Despite some last minute scrambling the test went off without a hitch, said Brogan BamBrogan, the company’s co-founder.

Hyperloop One’s design builds on an open-sourced white paper published in 2013 by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The company casts the near-frictionless, high-speed Hyperloop concept as an efficient and safe alternative to other forms of transportation. It sees Hyperloop as the next mode for hauling cargo and passengers.

With officials predicting its final product could travel at 700 miles per hour, backers boast that it could shoot pods down enclosed tubes from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 30 minutes.

Hyperloop One executives applauded Gov. Brian Sandoval, Clark County and North Las Vegas for helping to expedite the permitting and approvals processes. In March, a state economic development board approved tax incentives worth $9.2 million to build a 2-mile test track, an expansion of the current 57-meter track that it used today.

BamBrogan said they are also building a manufacturing facility in North Las Vegas, outside of Apex, to provide parts.

“This is where Hyperloop is getting invented,” BamBrogan said.

The company will continue to use the small track, but in the coming months, it will also break ground on the larger 2-mile test track on more than 10 acres it purchased at the industrial park.

Hyperloop One Presentation

Hyperloop One CTO Brogan BamBrogan speaks about the global possibilities during a Hyperloop One presentation at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health auditorium on Tuesday, May 10, 2016. Launch slideshow »

It hopes to conduct a full-scale demonstration in December. With that project, it is expected to invest more than $121 million in its Nevada test projects and create about 100 jobs.

“I think it has brought a lot of recognition to Nevada,” said Steve Hill, the state’s chief economic development officer.

Today’s test was significant because it provided validation that Hyperloop One’s propulsion technology would be viable once the system is built. The test demonstrated that the frame for the pod, a small sled, could be propelled with electromagnetic energy.

“The team has worked incredibly hard in record time to get to this milestone,” said Shervin Pishevar, a Hyperloop One co-founder.

Apex has had difficulty attracting development because of limited access to utilities. For now, the company is getting its power from portable generators. But as the project progresses and it builds a full-scale Hyperloop platform, its infrastructure will be connected with a substation that NV Energy is planning to build at Apex.

Hyperloop One said it plans to bring a product to market that can transport cargo by 2019 and one to transport people by 2021.

The startup is not without competition, though. It is one of two companies racing to build the first Hyperloop platform. The other firm, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, announced on Monday that it has a license for magnetic levitation technology first developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

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