Looks like the world is looking on to India for everything, even high-speed transportation systems.
In line with its counterpart, now ‘Hyperloop One’ too envisions India as a potential market. If you’d remember, Elon Musk-backed Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) — the bigger rival of Hyperloop One — had announced setting up its operations in the country. With the increase in number of proposals and applications from India, Hyperloop One is now also considering India as a potential market for this futuristic mode of transport.
The company is working upon having an event in India in first quarter of 2017. They are also trying to set up open discussion forums with Indian Government and businesses. The key areas of focus for Hyperloop One will be major cities, ports, airports and logistics centres.
The news was confirmed by Alan James, vice-president, worldwide business development passenger systems, Hyperloop One as,
We received a number of high quality entries from Indian teams. We are now in the process of evaluating the proposals submitted from India and elsewhere. We are going hold an event in India in early 2017.
The idea of using vacuum tube-shaped modules(or pods) to transport passenger at 800 mph from city to city was first proposed by Elon Musk in 2013. He, who is of course a busy man building Humanity’s future, laid down the basic concept of the technologies involved in a white paper and made it public for anyone to adopt and develop on the same.
Since then, two key players — HTT and Hyperloop One — have been aggressively spending time to build their individual technologies and perfect their mechanisms for large-scale commercial deployment. Both of them are the foregoing — and perhaps the only — players in high-speed travel at low cost. After HTTs’ pace in India, Hyperloop One is coming to India through its Hyperloop One Global Challenge. HTT’s Chief Operating Officer Bibop Gresta visited India to attend the i5 summit. The gait was quite predictable since then.
Further, Hyperloop One VP James talks about changing and upgrading Indian transportation through his company’s resources. He claims of having wide ranging effects on Indian population and transportation. He says,”India is a market of significant interest to Hyperloop One, given the pressing imperative to upgrade India’s freight and passenger transport infrastructure so that it is ‘fit for purpose’ as India cements its position as one of the 21st Century’s powerhouse economies.”
Recently, Hyperloop One secured a $50 million round in the form of a convertible-debt financing led by Dubai’s DP World Group. Through the investment , the company is working upon full-scale test of the transportation system. It is quite possible with India as a market of interest, they might launch a project in India pretty soon.
