New Hyperloop Projects Continue in Europe (cnn.com) 38
Hyperloop One ceased operations in December 2023, notes CNN. "Yet nearly two years on, in other parts of the world, hyperloop projects are ongoing." For example, Rotterdam-based Hardt Hyperloop has a cool web site — and the company's managing director tells CNN that hyperloops are the only "actionable, sustainable solution to replace short-haul air travel" over distances greater than 300 miles. "It's 90% more efficient than air travel, operational expenses and maintenance costs are much lower than conventional high-speed railways and, as an enclosed, autonomous system, it's not affected by external factors such as bad weather or strikes."
Rail-friendly Europe appears to be the new hyperloop hub, with four companies dedicated to it... Europe's Hyperloop Development Program (HDP) is a public-private partnership backed by EU funding and the private sector. HDP's vision is to have the first set of commercially viable hyperloop lines open by 2035-40, followed by a route network by 2050. It estimates that a 15,000-mile network linking 130 of Europe's major cities could shift 66% of short-haul flight passengers to hyperloop by 2050, saving between 113 million and 242 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. Core network hubs would be scattered across the continent from London to Berlin, Madrid to Belgrade, and Sofia to Athens, while loops would serve the Iberian Peninsula, the Baltic States and Scandinavia, the Balkans and Central and Eastern Europe. The cost? A cool 981 billion euros, or $1.1 trillion, according to HDP estimates...
[T]hose behind the EU-backed HDP project are hoping to have a full-scale test track of up to 3 miles operational by the end of 2029, followed by a 20-30 mile twin-tube "Living Lab" which would replicate all aspects of day-to-day operation and public service, slated to be up and running by 2034. Elsewhere, Hyperloop Italia is investing in a demonstration line between Venice and Padua costing up to €800 million ($929 million) which could be ready by 2029, while Germany, Spain, India and China are also investigating trial routes to establish the viability of the technology.
And meanwhile China and Japan are also building "maglev" (magnetic levitation) train lines, the article points out — though it also includes this quote from rail expert and author Christian Wolmar. "Hyperloop is unworkable. The infrastructure it needs would be amazingly expensive to build and it can't deliver the capacity to compete with high-speed railways or airlines.
"It doesn't integrate with existing transport modes, the infrastructure required to reach city centers would cause intolerable noise and disruption. And there are doubts over energy costs, capacity and passenger safety if something goes wrong at such high speeds....
"[T]he economics of it just don't work."
[T]hose behind the EU-backed HDP project are hoping to have a full-scale test track of up to 3 miles operational by the end of 2029, followed by a 20-30 mile twin-tube "Living Lab" which would replicate all aspects of day-to-day operation and public service, slated to be up and running by 2034. Elsewhere, Hyperloop Italia is investing in a demonstration line between Venice and Padua costing up to €800 million ($929 million) which could be ready by 2029, while Germany, Spain, India and China are also investigating trial routes to establish the viability of the technology.
And meanwhile China and Japan are also building "maglev" (magnetic levitation) train lines, the article points out — though it also includes this quote from rail expert and author Christian Wolmar. "Hyperloop is unworkable. The infrastructure it needs would be amazingly expensive to build and it can't deliver the capacity to compete with high-speed railways or airlines.
"It doesn't integrate with existing transport modes, the infrastructure required to reach city centers would cause intolerable noise and disruption. And there are doubts over energy costs, capacity and passenger safety if something goes wrong at such high speeds....
"[T]he economics of it just don't work."
The YouTuber Adam Something (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if this is just one of the mill corruption with money being handed out to people or if this is like how in America hyperloop bullshit with used to shut down high speed rail in California.
Whatever the case it's frustrating to see this scam still continuing on
How things are decided in 2025 (Score:2)
The argument against Hyperloop is that there are Youtube videos calling it a scam.
Luckily, I don't have to call it - I invested all my cash in monkey pictures.
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The argument for Hyperloop is that there is a "cool" web site in Holland.
I saw that line in TFS and thought "what are we, 10 years old?"
As far as the arguments against hyperloop goes - we've hashed those out ad nauseum before. The only thing that's keeping the hyperloop hype train going is that, somehow, there are still a few Musk fanbois in existence.
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The only thing that's keeping the hyperloop hype train going is that, somehow, there are still a few Musk fanbois in existence.
Can we please stop pretending that Elon Musk invented well... literally anything. Zip2, Paypal, Electric cars, rockets that both take off and land, solar power, battery power storage, tunnel boring, cybernetics, LEO communications satellites, AI/LLMs, self-driving cars/robotaxis, humanoid robots, flamethrowers, eugenics, etc. Every single thing he has been involved in is an idea that has been thought of before and published and often implemented before by other people. The hyperloop is not his idea. Aside f
You can go watch the video (Score:2, Insightful)
If you can't be arsed to learn things though I can't help you. Maybe reddit's "conservative" forum is more your speed then. They'll do a good job of protecting you from knowledge.
Did you know they had a week long gap in new posts when the voting on the Epstein files was going on?
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Maybe you could ask a smart friend to make a cool website for him ?
"If you can't be arsed to learn things though I can't help you."
It's actually you writing that LOL
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Was going to mention Adam Something as well. Europe already has functioning high-speed rail with work ongoing to expand it, I can't see the HypeLoop scammers getting very far beyond press releases.
You've also got to look at the source of the story, a CNN Travel writer.who also covers rail stories, of course he's going to be a cheerleader for HypeLoop in Europe.
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I wonder if this is just one of the mill corruption
It is that, plus the activity the money is burned for allows for some PR where politicians can claim they are doing something "innovative". Just like with solar freaking roadways, which everyone having few years of physics education can easily debunk as inefficient, and they never worked anywhere, yet time and again new sponsored projects of the same type pop up somewhere on the planet.
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It's incredible that anyone still invests in it, after Musk publicly admitted it was a scam.
And "the only solution for trips over 300 miles"? Less than an hour via existing maglev technology, which both Japan and China are deploying as we speak. That's just the start though, maglev can probably double that speed, close to the speed of sound. The issue is the noise, and you don't need a vacuum tube to solve it.
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China (and also the UK lolololololol) is installing 220mph rated conventional high speed rail tracks. Sure, not under an hour, but still under 2. That's still about an hour and a half (e.g. London to Dublin) gate to gate plane with all the faffing around, never mind the airport faff.
And yet somehow people make 300mile trips by plane and train all the time.
The issue is the noise, and you don't need a vacuum tube to solve it.
You'll need a lot of power to do that, but there's no theoretical reason why it's imp
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China is building a maglev line between Beijing and Shanghai, which will then extend south. Given how fast they build conventional high speed rail, I expect that expansion will be rapid.
It's an interesting design too, and a largely domestic one. They do have a German built maglev in Shanghai, but the new EMUs they have been showing off bare little resemblance beyond using electromagnetic suspension. I'm looking forward to comparing it to Japan's electrodynamic suspension.
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I am a little surprised to see Europe getting in on the scam though.
"Europe" isn't getting in on the scam as much as they are getting in on the scamming. The public investment in these projects is virtually nil except for some back scratching for mates in high places, and investment in these smells like shell companies laundering money.
Grifters International (Score:2)
Scamming money around the globe.
Well, that answers my question... (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like someone signed up for another round of 'faff with apps vs. offshoring our entire high tech supply chain' and hoped it would work better this time.
And some dumbass 'managing director' is telling us that a gigantic safety-critical vacuum system is 'not effected by strikes'; more or less because he has no idea what the maintenance and operations would involve? Truly a joke telling itself.
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While I agree with you, I wanted to add that if a hyperloop would be built in practice, the effect of worker strikes would be mitigated, not by the "autonomous" argument of the dumbass managing director, but by Minimum Services laws that allow the Government to requisition essential workers, as already happens every time a strike occurs in the public transportation sector.
trains (Score:1)
I understamd how Americans fall for this nonsense, but Europe has a well developed railroad system and efficient short distance flights.
Why would the Europeans fall for this inefficient, ineffective, economically insane, dangerous, unproven, ridiculous scam?
Re:trains (Score:4, Interesting)
Good lord, we agree on something.
Anyway I think the issue is that there are idiots everywhere, and a lot of people who jump on bandwagons and are too proud to jump off once the evidence comes out it's a scam. And while I hate the idea personally, it sounds worse than flying, I would assume a lot of people look at the transportation speeds involved, and just assume it would be successful for that reason, especially in an era where a significant number of people believe America's railroads collapsed due to "flying", when the story is way, way, more complicated (essentially a systemic shock from all sides, over regulation, poorly thought out taxes that weren't applied to rival transportation systems, poor management, and out of control dumbass unions. A perfect storm of crappiness.)
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I understamd how Americans fall for this nonsense, but Europe has a well developed railroad system and efficient short distance flights.
Why would the Europeans fall for this inefficient, ineffective, economically insane, dangerous, unproven, ridiculous scam?
These project are never about anything technical or practical, they are just vehicles to funnel tax payer's and gullible investor's money into the pockets of some shifty people. Not really different from the frequent occasions where some municipality pays $$$$$$ for some shitty "artwork", made with very little effort by someone who knows someone who...
We do these things not because they are hard (Score:2, Interesting)
4 years from now they hope to have built 4 miles of track. Wow - aim fucking high boys !
So we can assume their plan is to get the EU grants, do nothing for four years, deliver something trivial, then cancel the project and pocket the cash.
Clicked on that "cool" web site... (Score:4, Informative)
I clicked on the button "Invest now"
It links here: https://www.hardt.global/investment
Which goes to their error page.
Cool.
"We couldn't find the page you were looking for. This is either because:
There is an error in the URL entered into your web browser. Please check the URL and try again.
The page you are looking for has been moved or deleted.
Hardt has recently updated its website and the page is not existent anymore
You can return to our homepage by clicking here"
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I've thinking of selling my monkey JPEGs and taking a position in Looperhype.
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I went to that "cool" web site. I clicked on the button "Invest now" It links here: https://www.hardt.global/inves... [www.hardt.global] Which goes to their error page.
You did not really expect those people to put a lot of effort into their Potemkin village?
Why noisy? (Score:2)
Isn't it a vacuum? There's no noise in a vacuum. No sound barrier.
And that goes for energy consumption too. If it's operating in a vacuum then it'll be highly power efficient.
Re: Why noisy? (Score:1)
The noise probably comes from the equipment that sucks air out to maintain the vacuum.
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Which is fixed in place and can be well damped even at that location. There is no shortage of noisy air conditioning in every office block. If that's the only concern then it's an obvious red-herring.
Enough of this crap (Score:2)
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Purely from a technology perspective, they're probably feasible in that physically if we really really wanted to build them, we could. From an everything else perspective, they're worse than pointless (it's used to try and discredit feasible projects).
Cheep Accidents (Score:1)
Titan Sub all over again (Score:3)
Except it is publicly funded