The world and Elon Musk were both very different when the latter released a whitepaper for "Hyperloop" transit in 2013. Musk didn't care to build a Hyperloop himself, but multiple startups have tried. Hyperloop One may have been the most prominent, but the company was unable to make Hyperloop happen even with hundreds of millions in funding. Hyperloop One is selling assets and laying off workers as it heads toward a shutdown at the end of 2023.
The idea behind Hyperloop transit sounds good at first. You build a sealed tube, remove all the air, and use that to run train-like maglev capsules at incredibly high speeds. It makes a certain kind of science fictional sense, but creating a vacuum inside the tube presents numerous safety and engineering challenges. Hyperloop One was not equipped to solve those problems, and it was the furthest along.
Founded in 2014, just one year after Musk released the Hyperloop whitepaper, Hyperloop One collected about $450 million in venture capital. One of the largest investors was Richard Branson's Virgin Group, which lent its name to the company for a time. However, the Virgin Hyperloop branding was abandoned when the company shifted its focus from passengers to cargo. It never made it as far as doing any cargo transportation, though. A short section of Hyperloop track was built in the desert for testing, but that's as far as Hyperloop One got.
As for Elon Musk, he hasn't done much with the Hyperloop concept on his end. Musk founded The Boring Company, which he envisioned digging tunnels for Hyperloop systems. However, the company has only dug a handful of tunnels. It's mostly been a vehicle for Elon Musk's stranger ideas, like a flame thrower and burnt hair perfume. Technically, the Boring company can dig a tunnel for anything—one of its few completed projects is a 4,000-foot subterranean loop under the Las Vegas Convention Center, but this vanity project isn't previewing the end of traffic as Elon Musk claimed when he revealed the Hyperloop. A fleet of Tesla vehicles drives through the tunnel to transport passengers.
Hyperloop One has reportedly laid off most of its staff, reports Bloomberg, but there weren't many left anyway. The company shed 200 jobs in early 2022 and closed its Los Angeles office. Operations have been consolidated under its largest investor, Dubai-based DP World. Hyperloop One's intellectual property will be transferred to DP World, and the remaining employees are tasked with selling off the company's assets before the end of the year.
With Hyperloop One burning through half a billion dollars with nothing to show for it, we have to ask ourselves if the Hyperloop was even a good idea in theory. After a decade of zero progress, maybe we should recognize this for what it is: an infeasible idea that gained traction because it piggybacked on Elon Musk's rise to prominence.
