Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies

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Type
  
Private

Founded
  
2014

Website
  
hyperloop.global

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies hyperloopglobalwpcontentuploads201611HTTlo

Industry
  
High-speed transport Crowdsourcing

Headquarters
  
11844 Jefferson Blvd Culver City, CA 90230, USA

Key people
  
Dirk Ahlborn (CEO) Bibop Gresta (Chairman)

What is hyperloop cenk uygur interviews hyperloop transportation technologies ceo and coo


Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, also known as HTT, is an American research company formed using a crowd collaboration approach (a mix of team collaboration and crowdsourcing) to develop a transportation system based on the Hyperloop concept, which was envisioned by Elon Musk in 2013.

Contents

History

The company was founded by JumpStarter, Inc., utilizing the company's crowdfunding and collaboration platform JumpStartFund. The company has assembled a team of community members, attracting high level engineers and contributing corporations including Ansys for computer simulation resources and GloCal Network Corporation and UCLA Architecture & Urban Design for developing the social interface for the Hyperloop project.

A December 2014 article in Wired revealed that the development work is being done by approximately 100 engineers who are located across the United States. The members are working in exchange for stock options, and were selected from a group of about 200 who initially applied. The company is not focusing on the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco route that was the baseline of the Hyperloop Alpha design from 2013, and will instead consider other routes. As of 2014, the company is projecting the completion of a technical feasibility study in 2015, but also says that they are at least ten years away from a commercially operating Hyperloop.

By February 2015, the company had grown to nearly 200 people, and had announced that it would hold an initial public offering that year to raise US$100 million. HTT also entered a formal agreement with GROW Holdings, the developer of Quay Valley, California, to construct a 5-mile (8 km) demonstration track beginning in 2016. By November, HTT had grown to just under 500 people.

In August 2015, engineering design and construction firm AECOM began providing engineering services to HTT for the design of the full-scale Quay Valley prototype track.

"In 2013, HTT partnered with the engineering software developer Ansys, which ran simulation models for the fluid dynamics of the Hyperloop. In 2014, HTT teamed up with UCLA's Suprastudio master's in architecture program, which designed the [putative] “human factor” of the HTT user experience, from pods to station architecture to boarding and ticketing. In August [2015], HTT announced partnerships with international engineering giant Aecom and Oerlikon, the world's oldest vacuum technology [specialist]."

In 2016 the CEO, Dirk Ahlborn, announced an agreement with the Slovakian government to perform feasibility studies regarding routes connecting Vienna, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia, and Bratislava to Budapest, Hungary. Total costs for this project are estimated to be US$200–300 million. The resulting annual system capacity is projected to be 10 million passengers. HTT announced in March of 2016 that they would be using passive Inductrack systems for their titular Hyperloop.

In January 2017, HTT announced that it will be opening a new facility in Toulouse, France. The 32,000 sq ft (3,000 m2) facility will be used to host its research.

Project

The concept of the Hyperloop was popularized by Elon Musk, not affiliated with HTT. The project was to develop a high speed, intercity transporter using a low pressure tube train which would reach a top speed of 800 miles per hour (1,300 km/h) with a yearly capacity of 15 million passengers.

HTT also plans to build slower privatized urban Hyperloops for inter-suburb travel.

References

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Wikipedia