Hyperloop: A promise or a hype?

CHENNAI: Hyperloop is the latest buzz in the town. Sir Richard Branson, the CEO of the LA-based Virgin Hyperloop One touched down in Mumbai last week. There, he signed an MoU with the Maharashtra government to build the world’s first Hyperloop. 

Things began speeding up soon afterwards. Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the project’s foundation stone at the Magnetic Maharashtra Global Business Summit on Monday. 

Once operational, the Hyperloop will link the cities of Mumbai and Pune. The travel time between them will shrink to a mere 25 minutes from the present three-and-half hours. 

However, it’s not all that easy. Technical challenges and huge cost involved in building a Hyperloop have given many second thoughts about its viability. 

What is Hyperloop?

Hyperloop is a futuristic mode of transport proposed by LA-based billionaire investor Elon Musk in 2012. In Hyperloop, pods or containers will carry people at speeds over 1000 km/hr through a low-pressure tube. Musk called in the fifth mode of transport -- the other four being rail, road, air, and water. 

How does it work?

The pods or containers will float through the tube using magnetic levitation technology. Put simply, magnetic levitation is the use of magnetic force to lift an object and propel it forward. Magnets have two oppositely polarised ends - North and South. Two poles that are similar repel each other and vice versa. This property of magnets is used to push and pull the pods forwards. 

Magnetic levitation technique has been around for quite some time and is presently used to levitate and float the high-speed Maglev rail networks across Europe.

The pods don’t come in touch with any surface. This ensures that there is no friction. When the wheels of a train hurtle through a track, it generates a significant amount of friction, which drags the train, leading to increased energy consumption. Pods don’t have to deal with friction as they float through a low-pressure tube. 

Also, the tubes are pumped to near vacuum. This means that there is very little air pressure, and thus, almost no resistance to the forward movement of pods. The absence of friction and air pressure enables the pods to travel at much greater speed than a train running through a track. 

If the Hyperloop project turns out to be a reality, the journey from Pune to Mumbai will take only 25 minutes. At present, it takes nearly 3.5 hours by rail. 

How does it help? 

The biggest advantage of Hyperloop is that it saves times. But what about money? Every day, nearly 1.5 lakh vehicles travel from Pune to Mumbai. Hyperloop will not only reduce traffic congestion on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway, but also cut down on carbon emission by 150,000 tonnes annually, claims Virgin Hyperloop One. 

Economic benefits are also abounding. Richard Branson, the CEO of the Virgin Hyperloop One has claimed that the economic benefits accrued to India due to time and energy saved and increased productivity would amount to Rs 3.5 lakh crore over 30 years. There is no way to test his claim as the world is yet to have its first operational Hyperloop system. 

Also, high-speed commute means one could travel from his/her home in Pune to workplace in Mumbai in a matter of less than half an hour. This may reduce the housing congestion in Mumbai and might help bring down the cost of housing there. 

Moreover, faster connectivity will help cities push their frontiers and accelerate the pace of their economic growth. For instance, businesses and manufacturers catering to Pune would benefit if the city becomes a key residential hub for those working in Mumbai. Also, it would become a key investment destination. Businessmen, eager to cash in on Pune’s expanding middle class, would throng to the city, leading to its expansion. 

Will it benefit an average person?

We don’t know yet. Richard Branson aims to make Hyperloops affordable for everyone. “We are not pricing this for the wealthy, but it will be for the masses,” he said. Experts are skeptical though. To begin with, it is still a concept that has not yet been successfully implemented. So, it is not easy to get a realistic estimate.  

Last year, the US Department of Transportation noted in a feasibility study that the “Cost estimates for a land-based Hyperloop system may appear lower than other modes, but as the technology is still conceptual and in very initial testing, there is uncertainty in both the underlying infrastructure needed to operate a system and the cost to construct it.” 

Estimates vary, but almost everyone agrees that the capital cost for a project of this scale would be very huge. Just how huge? Leaked documents from Hyperloop One puts the cost at $120 million or Rs 780 crore per mile. In other words, building a 100-km long Hyperloop system would cost approximately seventy-eight thousand crore rupees.   

Anybody investing so much money into a project would want to recover it in the long run. Although Elon Musk claimed that the ticket for a journey between L.A. and San Francisco could be priced as low as $20 (Rs 1300), many believe this would be a bad idea, if the Hyperloop is to be profitable for the investor. 

Many academics have also come forward expressing their skepticism about the project’s financial viability. Bent Flyvbjerg, an economist specialising in mega-projects at Oxford University agrees that it would be extremely difficult to make such a project financially viable. Jose Gomez-Ibanez, a professor of urban planning and public policy at Harvard University echoes Flyvbjerg. “It gives me pause to think that otherwise intelligent people are buying into this kind of utopian vision,” he says. 

Is it technically viable?

Cost aside, technological challenges pose major hurdles. The idea of a pod floating through a near-vacuum tube is not very far fetched. But there are numerous other issues that need to be tackled. “The biggest concern with this plan has to do with temperature. The pod will be compressing air and expelling it downwards and backward.  All that air compression creates an enormous amount of heat, which can damage the pod and its machinery,” wrote Sam Jaffe, Managing Director of Cairn Energy Research Advisors. 

Further, constructing and maintaining a 150-km long low-pressure tube would be a significant challenge. According to Dr. Phil Mason, a former chemist at Cornell University, maintaining a long vacuum tube would be a nearly impossible task. He says the air from outside would push against the walls of the near-vacuum tube “with a force of roughly 10 tons per square meter.” “That’s a huge amount of force to place on a steel wall of less than one-inch thickness and almost no air inside,” he said. 

Experts fear new challenges would present themselves once the engineers set themselves to the task of building the world’s first Hyperloop. 

Is it safe for humans?

Well, nobody knows for sure. Scientists worry that since pods travel at near subsonic speed, passengers would have to withstand a tremendous amount of G-force. At that speed, even a small curve in the tube would produce so much centrifugal force that most riders would end up sick. One must wait and see if people would walk out of the pods like zombies dead walking in Hollywood films.