Hyperloop Transportation Technologies
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Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, also known as HyperloopTT, is an American research company formed using a crowd collaboration approach (a mix of team collaboration and
crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...
) Lynda Applegate, Terri L. Griffith, and Ann Majchrzak
''Hyperloop Transportation Technologies: Building Breakthrough Innovations in Crowd-Powered Ecosystems''.
Harvard Business School Case 817-134, May 2017. (Revised October 2017.)
to develop around the world commercial transportation systems based on the
Hyperloop A hyperloop is a proposed high-speed transportion system for both public and goods transport. The idea was picked up by Elon Musk to describe a modern project based on the vactrain concept (first appearance in 1799). Hyperloop systems compri ...
concept. The concept of the Hyperloop was popularized in 2013 by
Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The Bori ...
, not affiliated with HyperloopTT. The project was to develop a high speed, intercity transporter using a
low pressure In meteorology, a low-pressure area, low area or low is a region where the atmospheric pressure is lower than that of surrounding locations. Low-pressure areas are commonly associated with inclement weather (such as cloudy, windy, with possible ...
tube train which would reach a top speed of with a yearly capacity of 15 million passengers. HyperloopTT also plans to build slower, urban Hyperloops for inter-suburb travel.


History


JumpStarter, Inc

The company was founded by JumpStarter, Inc., utilizing the company's
crowdfunding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...
and collaboration platform JumpStartFund. In 2013, HyperloopTT announced partnered with Ansys, GloCal Network and UCLA's Architecture & Urban Design program to aide in the early-stage development of feasibility testing, supply chain management and station experience.


Early routes

The company was not focused on the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco route that was the baseline of the Hyperloop Alpha design from 2013, and considered other routes. In 2015, HyperloopTT signed and agreement with GROW Holdings, the developer of
Quay Valley, California Quay Valley was a proposed 75,000-resident solar power city in Kings County, California that was to have been developed by GROW Land and Water LLC (originally Kings County Ventures LLC), halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 2008, the ...
, to construct a demonstration track beginning in 2016. Also in August 2015, HyperloopTT announced partnerships with international engineering design and construction giant
Aecom AECOM (, ; formerly AECOM Technology Corporation) is an American multinational infrastructure consulting firm. AECOM has approximately 51,000 employees, and is number 157 on the 2019 Fortune 500 list. The company's official name from 1990 t ...
and Oerlikon, the world's oldest vacuum technology specialist.
AECOM AECOM (, ; formerly AECOM Technology Corporation) is an American multinational infrastructure consulting firm. AECOM has approximately 51,000 employees, and is number 157 on the 2019 Fortune 500 list. The company's official name from 1990 t ...
began providing services to HyperloopTT for the design of the full-scale Quay Valley prototype track. Construction on this demonstration track in Quay Valley never started as GROW Holdings lacked the funds to continue the new community development and stopped all development in the valley.


Employee growth

The company's singular collaboration model meant that rather than employees, HyperloopTT has established a network of contributors all working a minimum of 10 hours per week in exchange for future equity. Initial development was done by approximately 100 engineers compensated solely in stock options. This initial team was primarily based within the United States. The company has assembled a team of community members, attracting high level engineers and contributing corporations. HyperloopTT saw a large growth in contributor numbers in 2015, in February the company had grown to nearly 200 contributors and by November had more than doubled to just under 500 people. HyperloopTT continued growing and began hiring full-time executives, to help manage the contribution of the crowd. Today, HyperloopTT boasts more than 800 contributors in 40 countries with 50 full-time employees and more than 50 corporate partners.


Early agreements

In 2016 then HyperloopTT CEO, Dirk Ahlborn, announced an agreement with the Slovak government to perform feasibility studies regarding routes connecting
Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...
to
Bratislava, Slovakia Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approximately 140% of ...
, and Bratislava to
Budapest, Hungary Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population of ...
. Total costs for this project are estimated to be . The resulting annual system capacity is projected to be 10 million passengers. The company announced in March 2016 that they would be using passive
Inductrack Inductrack is a passive, fail-safe electrodynamic magnetic levitation system, using only unpowered loops of wire in the track and perslide magnets (arranged into Halbach arrays) on the vehicle to achieve magnetic levitation. The track can be in on ...
systems for their titular Hyperloop. However, in August 2018 the agreement expired after the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and HyperloopTT didn't reach an agreement to continue the project. In September 2017, HyperloopTT signed an agreement with the
Andhra Pradesh Andhra Pradesh (, abbr. AP) is a state in the south-eastern coastal region of India. It is the seventh-largest state by area covering an area of and tenth-most populous state with 49,386,799 inhabitants. It is bordered by Telangana to the ...
State Government in
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
to build a Hyperloop between the cities of
Amaravati Amaravati () is the capital of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It is located on the banks of the river Krishna in Guntur district. The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone at a ceremonial event in Uddandara ...
and
Vijaywada Vijayawada, formerly known as Bezawada, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and is a part of the state's Capital Region. It is the administrative headquarters of the NTR district. Its metropolitan region comprises NT ...
. The two-phase project would begin with a 6-month feasibility study which would be followed by actual construction. In July 2018, HyperloopTT announced an agreement to create a joint venture with the government of China's southwestern province of
Guizhou Guizhou (; formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to t ...
to construct a 10 km long Hyperloop track in the city of
Tongren Tongren () is a prefecture-level city in eastern Guizhou province, People's Republic of China, located within a tobacco planting and crop agricultural area. Tongren was known as Tongren Prefecture () until November 2011, when it was converted into ...
.


Funding

In 2016, HyperloopTT had raised $31.8 million in cash and received $77 million in man-hours, services rendered, land rights usage and future in-kind investments. HyperloopTT's collaboration model has enabled significant advancement with significantly less financial resources as compared to competitors. A 2020
Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
article stated that HyperloopTT had received a total of $50 million in-cash investments since founding, a small figure compared to Virgin Hyperloop's $350 million. Despite the disparity in investments, HyperloopTT's Great Lakes project is the closest commercial Hyperloop project to operation.


Current prototypes

HyperloopTT is currently operating or designing four prototypes.


Toulouse

Since 2017 HyperloopTT has an agreement with the city council of Toulouse and established a research and development center to test hyperloop-related technologies at the Francazal Airport, in the heart of the renowned "Aerospace Valley". Construction began on the 320-meter long test system in April 2018. The completed test-track is 4 meters in diameter making it the world's only full-scale hyperloop test track.


Abu Dhabi

In November 2016, HyperloopTT signed an agreement with the Abu Dhabi Department of Municipal Affairs and Transportation to conduct a feasibility study for a hyperloop system connecting the cities of Abu Dhabi and Al Ain. In 2017, HyperloopTT and the Office of His Highness Sheikh Falah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a strategic partnership agreement accelerating the development of the system to create an innovative infrastructure in line with the Abu Dhabi 2030 vision. In 2018, HyperloopTT and Aldar Properties signed an agreement to develop the first 10-kilometer section of a system between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The system is expected to be operational by 2023.


Great Lakes

In February 2018, HyperloopTT announced a public-private partnership with the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA)
metropolitan planning organization A metropolitan planning organization (MPO) is a federally mandated and federally funded transportation policy-making organization in the United States that is made up of representatives from local government and governmental transportation authorit ...
and the
Illinois Department of Transportation The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) is a state agency in charge of state-maintained public roadways of the U.S. state of Illinois. In addition, IDOT provides funding for rail, public transit and airport projects and administers fuel ...
for the development of the United States’ first interstate hyperloop system in the Great Lakes megaregion. The project which initially only focused on connecting Cleveland to Chicago expanded in 2019 to include Pittsburgh as HyperloopTT looks to create the first part of a national network that would connect the midwest to the east coast through Pittsburgh. The Great Lakes project resulted in the world's most comprehensive hyperloop feasibility study demonstrating that the system would, “not only be a boon to communities along the travel corridors but also would be a strong business investment.” The study projected development costs of about $40 billion, but would see a $30 billion profit in the first 25 years of operation. The study also predicted a 931,745 increase in jobs, $74.8 billion increase in property values, and an expanded tax base that would generate $12.7 billion in government revenue from 2025 to 2050. The report also projected that the renewable powered emission-free hyperloop system proposed by HyperloopTT would eliminate 143 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions by replacing air, car, and rail transit along the corridor.


Hamburg

In 2018, HyperloopTT announced the creation of a joint venture with Hamburger Hafen und Logistik Aktiengesellschaft (HHLA) the leading container terminal operator in the Port of Hamburg. The project aims to build a 100-meter test track to test the cargo system before expanding the system to connect the port with an inland container yard to alleviate port congestion. In 2019, HyperloopTT announced a partnership with the Gaussin Group, a French autonomous vehicle company, to create the AIV HyperloopTT electric self-driving vehicles that will cost-efficiently carry and transfer containers for the fully automated Hyperloop Cargo System.


Challenges

HTT has been bold in making
forward-looking statement In United States business law, a forward-looking statement or safe harbor statement is a statement that cannot sustain itself as merely a historical fact. A forward-looking statement predicts, projects, or uses future events as expectations or ...
s, such as: * Feasibility study with UCLA by mid-2015 * Initial Public Offering in 2015 * Demonstration Track in 2016 * New facility in Toulouse, France Jan 2017


See also

*
List of crowdsourcing projects Below is a list of projects that rely on crowdsourcing. See also open innovation. A *Adaptive Vehicle Make is a project overseen by DARPA to crowdsource the design and manufacture of a new armored vehicle. *Air Quality Eggs by WickedDevices ...


References


External links

{{official, http://hyperloop.global Hyperloop Technology companies of the United States Transportation companies of the United States Transportation companies based in California Technology companies based in Greater Los Angeles American companies established in 2013 Transport companies established in 2013 2013 establishments in California Privately held companies based in California