I hate to be so negative. Elon is a really bright guy and electric cars are fantastic; a real advancement away from fossil fuels. We need more of that!<p>But we don't need hyperloop. We need decent subways, lightrail, buses and trams. And decently fast (200km/h) intercity trains. We don't lack the technology or the engineering, we lack the political will. Pissing away billions on more techno fantasy is just a distraction while the number of cars and parking lots and freeways just keeps on growing, accreting ever more, little by little, like it has for the past 60 years in the US. The layout of and density of US cities is already profoundly inefficient due to streets, parking lots, and freeways.<p>A lot of comments here seem to be betting big on self-driving cars, like somehow magic chariots will appear from the sky and whisk us away to fairy land where we never have to look at a stranger or sit in a seat next to someone we don't know, or god, touch a railing! And they'll just as easily disappear into the ether where they require neither maintenance nor upkeep, storage, or cleaning. Apparently these self-driving cars will also run on magic engines that are somehow going to be more efficient than electric light rail or subway, or god forbid, a bike.
Reminders about the initial criticisms of the Hyperloop plan, which I do not see rebutted anywhere in this article:<p>* It's riotously expensive, far more so than the white paper indicates; simply building the elevated track overpasses at the costs listed in the white paper would imply a revolution in civil engineering.<p>* Door-to-door transit times are within the same ballpark as HSR, because it's not possible to terminate Hyperloop tracks downtown in LA or SF; ROW issues put them roughly an hour outside each city.<p>* Hyperloops will have approximately the same security concerns as airplanes --- they fail more dangerously than normal trains --- and so will have TSA-style security checks, further slowing travel.<p>* At the speeds Hyperloop advocates claim, there is virtually no tolerance for bends on tracks without inducing nausea.
Great! I can't wait to see the pieces of this puzzle that turn out to be much harder than they first appear, and the pieces that turn out to be much easier.<p>No matter the final outcome, we'll learn tons, which is a win.
I know Hyperloop has a ton of naysayers -- partly because the initial price tag of $6 billion is most likely a severe underestimation -- but...<p>It has the potential to make a tremendous impact on society, much more so than self-driving cars in my opinion. Just as a simple example, imagine what would happen to the Bay Area housing market if people could live in a ~300 mile radius and still get to work in downtown SF in less than 30 minutes.
With rail - particularly these days when it's practical to work on trains - it's not really the speed, it's the capacity. And Hyperloop's capacity advantage seems to come solely from the assumption that their cars will be allowed to run as close as buses or trams or lorries.<p>We allow lorries to run at 56mph less than a meter nose-to-tail, with a human at the controls. Yet we require signalling blocks that put miles of clear air between two successive trains even when automatically operated. We could make rail vastly more economic overnight if we simply allowed it to operate at the same safety levels that we accept for road traffic.
Why do we insist on character worship. Hyperloop is not his idea - it's a totally obvious idea that has popped up many times since the 1800s:
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop#Historical" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop#Historical</a>
Compressing the air in front of the capsule is not some fantastic stroke of genius - it's trivially obvious.<p>All he has done is drawn our attention to a really good idea.
The political implications tied to self-driving cars are all scary.<p>The political implications tied to self-driving trains are not.<p>The difference being the rails that bind and inhibit true autonomy.<p>An internet of two-ton things hurtling at 60+ MPH should not be an idea tossed about dismissively. It should at least be locked into track systems, or loops as training wheels, for baby's first sentient AI.