Hyperloop details revealed

Thanks.

They'd be mad to build it in such a fault area. A better test would be on the heavier traffic Eastern seaboard, Say New York- Chicago. or New York- Miami
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is hardly a new idea.. I saw this basic idea being touted as a TransAtlantic transport system a few years ago on Discovery Cahnnel.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is hardly a new idea.. I saw this basic idea being touted as a TransAtlantic transport system a few years ago on Discovery Cahnnel.
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Correct, but the point Musk is making that such a system becomes inefficient over long distances, compared to air travel. And this system is possible with current technology and he says, financially feasible. Discovery come up with a lot of stuff which looks great, but nobody will bankroll. Remains to be seen how far this idea will go. People will pay a premium for convenience, but there is a limit.
 
Yeah, that much I'm very aware of...

They reckon it can do 840 passengers an hour (I'm going to assume thats total in both directions).

Assuming it ran 24 hours a day at full capacity, that would be 20160 people per day, or 7.3584m per year.

To pay it off in 5 years, they would need to charge a minimum of $1630 per ticket. (based on the estimated cost of $6bn to build.)

To pay it off in 20 years, they would need to charge a minimum of $407 per ticket.

I'm actually failing to see the economic feasibility of this project, and I'm not taking into account the on going maintenance and running costs.
 
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ToxicBunny said:
Yeah, that much I'm very aware of...

They reckon it can do 840 passengers an hour (I'm going to assume thats total in both directions).

Assuming it ran 24 hours a day at full capacity, that would be 20160 people per day, or 7.3584m per year.

To pay it off in 5 years, they would need to charge a minimum of $1630 per ticket. (based on the estimated cost of $6bn to build.)

To pay it off in 20 years, they would need to charge a minimum of $407 per ticket.

I'm actually failing to see the economic feasibility of this project, and I'm not taking into account the on going maintenance and running costs.
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It's like Concorde. Never made a penny.Not even when subsidized by the Frogs and the Brits. Not even close to any form of ROI.
 
Hosehead said:
It's like Concorde. Never made a penny.Not even when subsidized by the Frogs and the Brits. Not even close to any form of ROI.
Click to expand...

I very much doubt something will be built on this scale that doesn't at least come close to some kind of ROI in this kind of economic climate.

The world is somewhat more wary of "wasting" money now.
 
I have to admit. Its a interesting take on a existing concept.
Very cool and futuristic, and feasible. Just like a monorail.
And has the same benefits as a monorail, with the added benefit of speed.

But it has exactly the same drawback as a monorail - what happens if something goes wrong?
If anything serious goes wrong and a section of track has to be replaced or repaired, the entire system goes down.
Picture sitting in a passenger capsule, in a 2.5 m steel tube after the system goes down....

He does mention branches allowing stops along the way and that the tubes will be separated into segments, but this will add to the complexity, and cost. And risk. The cars are 23 km apart, but with 28 passengers in a car, leaving LA every 2 minutes, the safety system will cost as much as the line itself. And they can forget about the artist impression of two neat tubes running parralel next to each other. Most of the way it will be three or four tubes, depending on the terrain and the stops.

Still. Quite cool. It would be nice to imagine such a system in SA, say Johannesburg to Durban (490 km, but the change in altitude will be hectic) or Johannesburg to Bloemfontein (404km, but who'd use it) and Bloemfontein to Cape Town (900 km, not feasible :cry:) But we do not have the population to merit it.
 
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ToxicBunny said:
Yeah, that much I'm very aware of...

They reckon it can do 840 passengers an hour (I'm going to assume thats total in both directions).

Assuming it ran 24 hours a day at full capacity, that would be 20160 people per day, or 7.3584m per year.

To pay it off in 5 years, they would need to charge a minimum of $1630 per ticket. (based on the estimated cost of $6bn to build.)

To pay it off in 20 years, they would need to charge a minimum of $407 per ticket.

I'm actually failing to see the economic feasibility of this project, and I'm not taking into account the on going maintenance and running costs.
Click to expand...

Consider that he's proposing it as an alternative to a rail link that is 10x the price?

It's a piece of infrastructure that enables economic activity (like a freeway...) - the users don't need to bear the entire cost - that's a capital investment by the government for the benefit of the country.
 
ToxicBunny said:
Yeah, that much I'm very aware of...

They reckon it can do 840 passengers an hour (I'm going to assume thats total in both directions).

Assuming it ran 24 hours a day at full capacity, that would be 20160 people per day, or 7.3584m per year.

To pay it off in 5 years, they would need to charge a minimum of $1630 per ticket. (based on the estimated cost of $6bn to build.)

To pay it off in 20 years, they would need to charge a minimum of $407 per ticket.

I'm actually failing to see the economic feasibility of this project, and I'm not taking into account the on going maintenance and running costs.
Click to expand...

Consider that he's proposing it as an alternative to a rail link that is 10x the price?

It's a piece of infrastructure that enables economic activity (like a freeway...) - the users don't need to bear the entire cost - that's a capital investment by the government for the benefit of the country.
 
Thing is, surely the Rail Link/Freeway is mostly there already?

Granted, I'm working off a few assumptions... If this is a totally greenfields project and there is no established mass transit system between the two locations, then its a different story altogether.
 
Ahhh ok, that changes things...

If this is an alternative to another project that hasn't been built yet, then by all means do so. Except of course the High Speed Rail does go a bit further than just LA.
 
An amendment to my very rough calcs...

According to the documents, its 7.4m people each way, so 14.8m people in total.. That changes the theoretical costings quite significantly.
 
Ok. Guilty. I had not read the entire document yet when I made my earlier comment.
The safety features have been thought out nicely, he has that covered - I stand corrected.

One of the proposed branches is from Central LA to Las Vegas. Thats 400 km - 4 hours 48 minutes travel time by road - which in his design the system would follow. So - based on his numbers - about 25 minutes by HyperLoop.

I'd be very surprised if one or more of the big Casino's does not see the merit of a cheap and fast way for visitors to travel from LA.
Forbes just mentioned that Elon is thinking of building a Proof of Concept model himself...
 
ToxicBunny said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is hardly a new idea.. I saw this basic idea being touted as a TransAtlantic transport system a few years ago on Discovery Cahnnel.
Click to expand...
I'm not familiar with the details of the discovery one but I'd be very surprised if it has the same combination of ideas. Elon kept a bunch of people guessing on twitter as to the implementation & exactly one person came anywhere near.

ToxicBunny said:
An amendment to my very rough calcs...

According to the documents, its 7.4m people each way, so 14.8m people in total.. That changes the theoretical costings quite significantly.
Click to expand...
You're missing the point. You can't boil this down to rands & cents like that. e.g. Its projected to be significantly faster than rail. Meaning 14.8m people each with time savings that can be used productively. This is essentially a public enterprise project (with sneaky private benefits), so the cumulative effect on society is what matters.
 
The discovery one, was a vacuum or near vacuum tube, suspended about 50 - 100m below the surface of the atlantic and had capsules being shunted between europe and the US on it....

You can boil it down to rands and cents though....

Yes it has benefits over and above HSR, etc.. but if it doesn't make viable economic sense as a standalone project (at least to a point) then it will never be built...

Granted he is about 1 year too late since the HSR was approved and budgeted for last year iirc.
 
ToxicBunny said:
The discovery one, was a vacuum or near vacuum tube, suspended about 50 - 100m below the surface of the atlantic and had capsules being shunted between europe and the US on it....
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Exactly my point. This is specifically addressed in the document I linked. The vacuum approach creates a whole host of problems that this design avoids.

ToxicBunny said:
if it doesn't make viable economic sense as a standalone project (at least to a point) then it will never be built...
Click to expand...
Huh? You think those 40+ billion maglevs being built make economic sense as a standalone project? Government projects are not required to be profitable - and they rarely are. Ever seen an economically viable firestation? Or perhaps our 12 brand new soccer stadium?

This whole government entities making a profit thing is an entirely South African notion - that runs contrary to all theory & common sense. Thats why we have to deal with sht like SANRAL wanting to build etolls everywhere. Government entities are supposed to spend their entire budget and return maximum benefit possible to society in doing so.
 
HavocXphere said:
Exactly my point. This is specifically addressed in the document I linked. The vacuum approach creates a whole host of problems that this design avoids.
Click to expand...

Near-Vacuum as in similar to this Hyper Loop idea...

HavocXphere said:
Huh? You think those 40+ billion maglevs being built make economic sense as a standalone project? Government projects are not required to be profitable - and they rarely are. Ever seen an economically viable firestation? Or perhaps our 12 brand new soccer stadium?

This whole government entities making a profit thing is an entirely South African notion - that runs contrary to all theory & common sense. Thats why we have to deal with sht like SANRAL wanting to build etolls everywhere. Government entities are supposed to spend their entire budget and return maximum benefit possible to society in doing so.
Click to expand...

I'm not talking about them making a profit in the slightest actually, I'm aware that we live in a strange country where government thinks the entities need to be profitable.

Its why I was talking about the projects making economic sense to a point.... whether its an economic driver, or something else is up for debate. There will be a fair amount of cultural resistance to a completely new "technology" in terms of transportation though, which could hinder the economic driver aspect of this project initially if it ever gets off the ground.... Also there is for some reason, an inherent distrust for things like this that seem to be driven by private entities (hell even I'm prone to it, initially I wrote this thing off as a pie in the sky idea, but the more I dig into it, and think about it.. the more I actually like the idea and think it could even work in SA)
 
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