Hyperloop One technology tested successfully in Nevada desert

Hyperloop One, a Los Angeles company working to develop futuristic transportation technology, conducted a successful test of its high speed transportation technology Wednesday in the desert outside Las Vegas.

The seconds-long, outdoor demonstration by Hyperloop One featured what appeared to be a blip of metal gliding across a small track before disappearing into a cloud against the desert landscape.

A fully operationalhyperloopwould whisk passengers and cargo in pods througha low pressure tube at speeds of up to 1,207km per hour (750 miles per hour). That could make it possible to travel from Montreal to Toronto in half anhour or Toronto to Vancouver in just three.

Maglevtechnology would levitate the pods to reduce frictionin the city-to-city system, which would be fully autonomous andelectric powered.

Brogan Bambrogan, a former engineer with Elon Musk's SpaceX company, said he was happy with the results of the test.

"That's what it was supposed to do. So we always like it when engineering tests go that way," saidBambrogan,HyperloopOne's co-founder and chief technology officer."Technology development testing can be a tricky beast, so you never know on a given day if things are going to work exactly like you want."

A day earlier, the company hadannounced the closing of $80 million infinancing and said it plans to conduct a full system test beforethe end of the year. It also announced that it was changing its name from Hyperloop Technologies to Hyperloop One.

Hyperloop One builds off a design by Tesla and SpaceX CEOElon Musk, who has suggested it would be cheaper, faster andmore efficient than high speed rail projects, including the onecurrently being built in California.

Speaking on the eve of the first demonstration test of thepropulsion in the Las Vegas desert, Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloydtried to dispel criticism that the technology is unproven andbetter suited for science fiction than practical use.

"It's real, it's happening now, and we're going todemonstrate how this company is making it happen," he said at apress conference.

He likened hyperloop technology to the emergence of the U.S.railroad system and the era of prosperity it ushered in.

Policy problems

The idea has skeptics, including professor James Moore II, director of the University of Southern California's Transportation Engineering Program.

He credited Musk for the new idea on how to move objects through tubes,but said backers would face myriad public policy issues before it's installed on a large scale, including questions about safety, financing and land ownership.

Such roadblocks are keeping self-driving vehicles off the road decades after the idea was born, he said.

"I would certainly not say nothing will come of hyperloop technology," Moore said. "But I doubt this specific piece of technology will have a dramatic effect on how we move people and goods in the near term."

Competition for location

Lloyd also announced a competition to determine where thefirstHyperloopOne system should be built, with an announcementexpected next year.

Early applications could centre around ports possiblyreplacing the trucks and trains that carry cargo from ships to
factories and stores.

New investors include 137 Ventures,KhoslaVentures, FastDigital, Western Technology Investment (WTI),SNCF, the FrenchNational Rail Company, a force behind high speed rail in Europe,and GE Ventures.

BamBrogansaid the company's engineering team is focused onfinding efficiencies to reduce the cost of building ahyperloop.

"We want to deliver all the value thathyperloopcan deliver the safe, the efficient, the on demand, the fast. But, we wantto deliver it at a cost basis that is absolutelytransformative," he said.

HyperloopOne has competition in the space, includingHyperloopTransportation Technologies, acrowdsourcedcompanythat last month signed an agreement with the Slovakiangovernment to build ahyperloopconnecting Slovakiawith Austriaand Hungary.