Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), one of two major efforts to make Elon Musk’s pipe dream (no seriously, it looks like a giant pipe) a reality, just scored a deal with Slovakia to look into building a three-country Hyperloop system. That’s right. Hyperloop is going global.
This series of tubes would connect three major cities in Austria, Hungary, and Bratislava with its longest leg of the journey being only 125 miles (by car) between Bratislava and Budapest. That’s less than half the proposed route initially suggested for San Francisco and LA. But if the company is able to cut through the bureaucratic BS that would likely plague a American project, the first passenger-ready Hyperloop system (beyond a simple test track) could be beyond United States borders.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is already working on a 5-mile prototype in California, which it hopes will be operational in 2018. So this European Hyperloop isn’t coming any time soon. But if/when it does, by HTT’s estimates it could let travelers and commuters get from city to city in ten minutes or less.
[Engadget]
Image via Suprastudio
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