Dubai Could Be Home To the World’s First Hyperloop
Add the Middle East to the list of potential inaugural sites for the super-fast transportation system.
While Elon Musk's dream of a series of transonic vacuum-sealed tubes for transporting people and goods may have been born in California, the Hyperloop may first become a reality in Dubai, according to one of the companies hard at work developing the futuristic transportation system.
According to Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd, Dubai is a prime location for the high-speed network to leap from concept to concrete. “It’s got the infrastructure, regulatory movement and kind of capital in place needed to build it already,” he said, according to Tech Crunch.
Hyperloop One is reportedly planning a feasibility study in partnership with port operations company DP World to see what developing a 'Loop for the Jebel Ali port could bring to the table. Supposedly, DP World is considering using an underwater version of the high-speed transport to zip cargo between the terminals. The port could use the help; the 67-berth facility is 52 square miles in size, and is the world's largest man-made harbor.
But Dubai is hardly the only region clamoring to be the first place the Hyperloop sets up shop. A Russian port company owned by billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov has also teamed up with Hyperloop One to consider whether the super-fast pods would be a good fit for Moscow's transportation needs. And separate Hyperloop development company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has signed on to potentially build an example of the system connecting Vienna, Bratislava, and Budapest.
Besides, any such production-spec Hyperloop obviously lies a long ways off. Hyperloop One only conducted its first large-scale test of the system back in May, when it fired a test bed for the electromagnetic propulsion system down a stretch of track in the Nevada desert. At the time, Lloyd said the company was hoping to have a cargo version of the system ready by 2019, with a passenger-spec Hyperloop up and running by 2021.
All this, of course, also assumes that Hyperloop One doesn't wind up bogged down in a legal quagmire over the lawsuit battle it is currently engaged in with incredibly-named co-founder Brogan BamBrogan. Which we mention largely so we can write "Brogan BamBrogan."