Tag: Transportation

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Hyperloop One zooms through speed test

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Hyperloop One’s propulsion test sled zooms down a Nevada desert track. (Credit: Hyperloop One)

The newly renamed Hyperloop One venture sent an electrically propelled sled down a Nevada test track at speeds that went beyond 100 mph in just two seconds, marking the public debut of its rapid-transit propulsion system.

Hundreds of journalists and VIPs watched the open-air propulsion test, which represents a milestone in the effort to commercialize a high-speed transportation system conceived three years ago by Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors.

Theoretically, such a system could transport passengers in levitating pods through elevated tubes at near-supersonic speeds, bridging the distance between, say, San Francisco and Los Angeles in a half-hour.

But turning theory into fact will probably require spending billions of dollars, pioneering scores of technologies and negotiating unprecedented regulatory hurdles. Today’s test was meant to demonstrate first-generation Hyperloop technology, and show that Hyperloop One was serious about building hardware and laying track, albeit for scaled-down testing.

Hyperloop One already has raised more than $100 million for its venture, including$80 million in investments that were announced on May 10.

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Hyperloop One gets an $80 million boost

Image: Hyperloop One test track
Components for a Hyperloop One test track are laid out in North Las Vegas. (Credit: Hyperloop One)

Forget Hyperloop Technologies: Now the company is called Hyperloop One, and it’s backed by $80 million in new investment from heavy hitters including Khosla Ventures, GE Ventures and the French high-speed rail company SNCF.

Today’s unveiling of the new name and new financing, as well as an international array of partners and a tuned-up business plan, is part of a fast-track plan for building high-speed tube transit systems – not only in California, but potentially in Scandinavia and Switzerland as well.

L.A.-based Hyperloop One is due to demonstrate its propulsion system on an open-air test track in North Las Vegas on Wednesday. It’s gearing up for full-scale trials in a 2-mile-long tube by the end of the year. It’s also planning a “Hyperloop One Global Challenge” for folks who want to propose transportation applications for the Hyperloop concept. (Deadline for entries is Sept. 15.)

This week’s revelations pick up the pace in a crowded commercial race, aimed at capitalizing on a rapid-transit concept laid out almost three years ago by Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind SpaceX and Tesla Motors.

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$50M contest sparks buzz over electric vehicles

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A plug-in hybrid vehicle gets an electric boost from a charging station in Portland, Ore. (Credit: PGE)

The winner of the $50 million Smart City Challenge won’t be announced until next month, but the organizers have already picked at least one winning technology for transforming transportation and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions: electric vehicles.

Switching over to electric vehicles will be a “central pillar” for urban transportation strategies, said Spencer Reeder, senior program officer for climate and energy at Seattle billionaire Paul Allen’s Vulcan Inc. Vulcan is contributing $10 million to support the challenge, while the U.S. Department of Transportation has pledged up to $40 million.

The challenge started last December, with the aim of encouraging mid-sized cities to develop safer, more efficient and more environmentally sound transportation systems. Seventy-eight cities submitted proposals, and in March, the field was trimmed down to seven finalists: Austin, in Texas, Columbus in Ohio, Denver, Kansas City in Missouri, Pittsburgh, Portland in Oregon and San Francisco.

The final submissions are due on May 24, and the winning city will receive the lion’s share of the prize money to help turn its plan into a demonstration project.

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Commercial Hyperloop race heats up

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A cutaway shows Hyperloop Transportaion’s concept for a passenger pod supported by passive magnetic levitation. (Credit: Hyperloop Trans)

This is a big week for the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation concept that waslaid out three years ago by Elon Musk, the tech mastermind behind SpaceX and Tesla: One California-based startup is talking about the magnetic levitation system it plans to use for its prototype, while another will be showing off its test track in North Las Vegas.

Neither company is associated with Musk, but both are hoping to capitalize on his concept. If such systems are built, passengers will be able to board levitating pods and zoom through tubes from the San Francisco Bay Area to Los Angeles in about a half an hour, at nearly supersonic speeds. The cost of building such systems is expected to amount to billions of dollars. That suggests only one company will win out.

Today, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced that it was licensing a system known as passive magnetic levitation or Inductrack to get its pods off the ground. The system was developed by the late Richard Post and fellow researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Labs.

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Tesla Model 3 electric car gets a 5-star reveal

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The Model 3 electric car will become Tesla Motors’ most affordable model. (Credit: Tesla Motors)

Tesla Motors’ Model 3 electric sedan may be geared for mass-market affordability, but CEO Elon Musk made it clear at tonight’s unveiling that he doesn’t intend it to be a third-rate car.

“It will be five-star in every category,” Musk told a standing-room-only, occasionally raucous crowd at Tesla’s warehouse-sized design studio at Hawthorne, Calif.

The $35,000 Model 3’s promised capabilities were arguably the biggest surprise of the evening: Musk said the scaled-down sedan would still have ample room for five people, thanks to a design that moves the instrument panel farther forward than the panel in the $70,000 Model S.

Even the base model will go from zero to 60 mph in less than 6 seconds, Musk said. And the driving range will be at least 215 miles on a charge.

“These are minimum numbers,” Musk said. “We hope to exceed them.”

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Hundreds line up to sign up for Tesla’s latest car

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Sid Bharadwaj, the first buyer in line at Tesla Motors’ Bellevue Square store, has his picture taken after putting down a $1,000 deposit for a Model 3 electric car. (Credit: Sid Bharadwaj / Tesla Motors)

BELLEVUE, Wash. – As the clock counted down to the big reveal for the Tesla Model 3 electric sedan, would-be buyers lined up by the hundreds today to put down a deposit, sight unseen.

The phenomenon was reminiscent of the hullabaloo that typically accompanies Apple’s launch of a new iPhone.

The Model 3 is way more expensive than an iPhone: List price, before tax incentives, is expected to be around $35,000. But that’s low for a Tesla, and that’s the point. All those folks who have been salivating over a $70,000 Model S sedan or an $80,000 Model X SUV are finally seeing something in a lower price range.

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Will self-driving cars be good for the planet?

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Volvo’s SARTRE project is aimed at developing fuel-saving approaches to autonomous driving, such as “platooning.” SARTRE stands for “Safe Road Trains for the Environment.” (Credit: Volvo)

Experts expect self-driving cars to make the roads much safer, and driving much more convenient. But what will they do to the environment? A newly published study suggests that, under some scenarios, the shift to autonomous vehicles could double energy use and greenhouse-gas emissions.

The good news is that other scenarios could lead to a nearly 50 percent reduction in those metrics by 2050, which would brighten the picture for coping with climate change. It all depends on how driverless cars are introduced into the marketplace, and how consumers and businesses respond.

“There is lots of hype around self-driving cars, much of it somewhat utopian in nature. But there are likely to be positives and negatives,” University of Washington engineering professor Don MacKenzie said. “By taking a clear-eyed view, we can design and implement policies to maximize the benefits and minimize the downsides of automated vehicles.”

MacKenzie is one of the authors of a study analyzing the range of possibilities, published today in the journal Transportation Research Part A. The survey comes as a plethora of companies, ranging from Ford and Tesla to Google and Apple, are hustling to make vehicles more autonomous and jump through regulatory hoops.

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Elon Musk wows students at Hyperloop contest

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Elon Musk, the originator of the Hyperloop concept, addresses students. (Texas A&M photo)

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology won the top rating in the design phase of a SpaceX-sponsored contest to develop levitating cars for a Hyperloop rapid-transit test track. More than 20 other teams, including a student group from the University of Washington, were also cleared for this year’s big race.

The design weekend, conducted at Texas A&M University, marked the first winnowing of the field for the competition. More than 115 student engineering teams, representing 27 U.S. states and 20 countries, participated in the event.

The highlights included a talk by Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx – and a surprise appearance by Elon Musk, the billionaire who heads SpaceX as well as the Tesla electric-car company.

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120 teams will vie in Hyperloop pod contest

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A cutaway illustrates the Hyperloop concept. (Credit: Patrick Grimmel via SpaceX)

More than 120 student engineering teams, including a group from the University of Washington, have been chosen for a Hyperloop pod design competition backed by billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla Motors.

Experts at SpaceX selected the teams from hundreds of entries to take part in a Design Weekend, scheduled for Jan. 29-30 at Texas A&M University. More than 1,000 students representing over 100 universities and three high schools will present their concepts to panels of judges at the event, the contest’s organizers said today in a news release. Check out the full list of registered teams.

The judges, representing SpaceX and Tesla as well as universities around the country, will decide which teams get a chance to build and test their design prototypes in the next round of the competition. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will discuss the future of transportation with the teams at a private event. The design submissions will be put on public display on Jan 30 at Texas A&M’s Hall of Champions in advance of the judges’ decision.

The competition’s final round will take place next summer at a test track that’s being built by SpaceX next to its headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.

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$50M contest aims to jump-start urban transit

An artist’s conception visualizes how “connected vehicles” could communicate. (Credit: USDOT)
An artist’s conception visualizes how “connected vehicles” could communicate. (Credit: USDOT)

The U.S. Department of Transportation and billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen’sVulcan Inc. are offering $50 million to midsize cities, including Seattle, in a “Smart City” competition to promote next-generation transportation systems.

“Our national vision for transportation is still very much constrained by 20th-century thinking about technology,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters today during a teleconference to announce the contest. “We are imagining connected and autonomous vehicles that practically eliminate crashes. And we are imagining this technology interacting with wired infrastructure to eliminate traffic jams as well.”

Foxx said the federal government would be unveiling new guidelines for autonomous vehicles sometime in the next few weeks, and requirements for vehicle-to-vehicle communications in the next year. But he also said DOT wants cities to come up with their own visions for transportation systems that are safer, more efficient and more environmentally friendly.

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