ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
- Elon Musk said The Boring Co will attempt to build a functional Hyperloop in the “coming years.”
- The billionaire first revealed his vision for the futuristic transportation system in 2013.
- The company said on Monday that it plans to begin full-scale testing “later this year.”
The Boring Company offered an update on its hyperloop ambitions, saying on Monday that it would begin testing for a full-scale version of the transportation system “later this year.”
The announcement came nearly 9 years after the tunnel-construction company’s founder, Elon Musk, first revealed his vision for a futuristic transportation system that would move people through low-pressure tubes in pods that could reach speeds as high as 760 miles per hour.
On Sunday, Musk said on Twitter that The Boring Company would “attempt to build a working Hyperloop” in the “coming years.”
“From a known physics standpoint, this is the fastest possible way of getting from one city center to another for distances less than ~2000 miles,” Musk said.
The Boring Company did not respond to a request for comment from Insider. Aside from acknowledging that it plans to begin testing within the year, the company did not provide any more details about the project.
Over the past week, The Boring Company raised $675 million in a funding round led by Vy Capital and Sequoia Capital. The round valued the company at over $5.6 billion.
The civil engineering company also added several new engineering roles this week, advertising jobs for workers that will specialize on the Hyperloop, including a role for a mechanical vacuum engineer.
After Musk presented the idea of a hyperloop in a 2013 white paper, The Boring Company gradually scaled back its ambitions, moving instead to build networks of single-lane tunnels that Teslas could drive through.
In 2021, The Boring Company opened its first tunnel to the public, a 1.7-mile network of tunnels under Las Vegas that used Teslas to transport people between destinations at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The Las Vegas transportation system was used during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this year to transport guests at a maximum speed of 40-miles per hour. It enjoyed relatively positive reviews from users.
Hyperloop technology is still theoretical and faces multiple challenges, including what is likely to be an extensive environmental review that could take years.
The system, as envisioned by Musk, would use vacuum technology as vehicles move faster in a low friction environment akin to outer space. In this idealized version of the technology, the Hyperloop would also operate as fast as about 7 miles per hour below the speed of sound.
The richest man in the world is not the only person to envision a future where hyperloop technology could ease transportation headaches. His company’s competitor, Virgin Hyperloop, completed its first passenger ride in its levitating transport system in 2020. The pod reached speeds faster than 100 miles per hour and took just 15 seconds to travel about a third of a mile at a test track in Nevada.
Virgin Hyperloop and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies have said they plan to make the technology available to the public by 2030.
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