Virgin has done its first test of the hyperloop in Arizona, near Las Vegas, with actual passengers onboard. A very short trip (500 meters), reaching a modest speed of 160 km/h in 15 seconds, but you have to start somewhere and this is the first time people are riding in a hyperloop.
(Courtesy: Virgin Hyperloop)
“For the past few years, the Virgin Hyperloop team has been working on turning its groundbreaking technology into reality,” said Sir Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin Group. “With today’s successful test, we have shown that this spirit of innovation will in fact change the way people everywhere live, work, and travel in the years to come.”
Josh Giegel, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, and Sara Luchian, Director of Passenger Experience, were the first people in the world to ride on this new form of transportation. To know more about it, this interesting article by "Interesting Engineering": https://interestingengineering.com/virgin-hyperloops-first-ever-two-passenger-test-is-a-success and to read more about Virgin Hyperloop, this is here: https://virginhyperloop.com/
However, at the same time, in Korea, KORAIL has announced the same week that its hyperloop train had reached 1,000 km/h during a test (without passengers).
This is the type of speed that could compete with airplanes.
And Japanese and French high-speed trains have transported billions of passengers at much higher speeds for already 40 years.
So, is this just corporate communication or the beginning of a revolution for mobility?
To learn more about the KORAIL experiment, this article from "Interesting Engineering": https://interestingengineering.com/south-koreas-hyper-tube-train-hits-major-milestone-reaches-over-621-mph
And if you want to deep dive and understand the complete history of hyperloop from the initial idea to what happened this week, watch this B1M video: https://youtu.be/zcikLQZI5wQ