India Is Close To Have A Hyperloop That Can Go From Mumbai To Prune In Less Than 35 Minutes

There has never been a functional hyperloop in the world, but that will soon change. India has just announced a plan to construct such a futuristic and ultra-fast transportation system.

For something that has never existed before, there are lots of obstacles along the way, how to make sure that this mean of transport is suitable for serving human passengers for example. This road is not easy, but the company behind this project, Virgin Hyperloop One, is confident that they can make a safe and fully functional vehicle that can travel at supersonic speed through vacuum tubes.

Maharashtra’s authority, the place where this project will take place, has announced that DP World, a global port operator, and Virgin Hyperloop One were the originators of this plan. A formal bidding process is expected to be held to create a mean of transport that can cover the distance from Pune to Mumbai, which currently takes around 3.5 hours by car, in less than 35 minutes. For this bidding process, Virgin Hyperloop One is sure that they would be the winner.

This project will not draw from taxes, but instead, it will be funded by DP World. The Dubai port operator will invest $500 million for phase one of the project. Other investors will cover the rest.

The hyperloop startup recently raised around $90 million from DP World following a previous investment of $25 million. According to the company’s filing, it is in need of $224 million in this equity sale. Eighty other investors have joined the round, but their names are not revealed.

Virgin Hyperloop One has its own testing facility in a desert north of Las Vegas. It is believed that the company has achieved a speed of 240 mph (370 km/h) in a vacuum tube, which is fast but is nowhere near the maximum speed of 700 mph. The company said that it needed an addition of 2,000 meters of track to reach that velocity.

Virgin Hyperloop One started to show interest in India in 2017 when it joined an agreement with Karnataka and Maharashtra to measure the effect of this mean of transport to these regions.