Hyperloop Technologies is a United States company formed to explore Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept. A Hyperloop is a high speed, intercity transportation system which uses passenger and cargo capsules inside a reduced air-pressure tube system that would reach a top speed of 800 miles per hour (1,300 km/h) with a yearly capacity of 15 million passengers. Musk envisioned it as an alternative to the California High-Speed Rail project.
At this moment Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, is looking to triple its number of engineers by the end of next year and possibly start service by the end of the decade. The plan to make passenger capsules that can travel in pressurized-air tunnels at speeds as fast as 800 miles per hour, can be built at a cost of about $24 million per mile. With Musk previously estimating the 375-mile Hyperloop trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles taking as little as a half hour, that'd imply tunnel costs for that route at about $9 billion. Not including the low, low land-acquisition costs in California, of course.
The hyperloop, which Musk dubs “the fifth mode,” would be as fast as a plane, cheaper than a train and continuously available in any weather while emitting no carbon from the tailpipe. If people could get from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 20 minutes, or New York to Philly in 10, cities become metro stops and borders evaporate, along with housing price imbalances and overcrowding.
