Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: Tech Are Yet. So I've been doing several episodes on
Speaker 1: big news stories of twenty twenty three, and I think
Speaker 1: you could make a strong case that this shouldn't count
Speaker 1: among them. But it is the conclusion of a pretty
Speaker 1: darn dramatic journey in tech, a journey that, fittingly enough
Speaker 1: is about transportation and how a blue sky concept turned
Speaker 1: out to be perhaps a bit too far into the clouds.
Speaker 1: So we are talking about the end of the company
Speaker 1: Hyperloop one. First, let's turn back the clocks a whole
Speaker 1: decade to the spring of twenty thirteen. That's when Elon
Speaker 1: Musk published a blog post that gave to tech about
Speaker 1: something he had been hinting about for a while since
Speaker 1: late twenty twelve at least, which was a new concept
Speaker 1: for mass transit that could work within or between cities.
Speaker 1: It involved an enclosed tube within which aluminum pods would
Speaker 1: zip about at incredible speeds up to eight hundred miles
Speaker 1: per hour or nearly one two hundred and ninety kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour, and that this would transform travel between cities
Speaker 1: that were too far apart to easily drive between, but
Speaker 1: perhaps too close together to take a flight from one
Speaker 1: to the other. So how would this all work well.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the idea was to pump out most
Speaker 1: of the air that was inside the tube. This would
Speaker 1: help reduce wind resistance significantly. The pods would use what
Speaker 1: were called air bearings. That is, they would use a
Speaker 1: cushion of air to hover inside the tube, kind of
Speaker 1: like an air hockey table works and powerful electro magnets
Speaker 1: would provide the propulsive force to push, slash pull the
Speaker 1: pods down the track. Passengers would sit in the pods.
Speaker 1: They would accelerate up to top speed at a rate
Speaker 1: that you know wouldn't turn them into soup, and similarly,
Speaker 1: they would decelerate at a rate that would be gentle
Speaker 1: as they neared their destination. Actually, Musk had a couple
Speaker 1: of different variations on this idea so early on, he
Speaker 1: suggested that these pods would have a pair of compressor fans,
Speaker 1: one on the front and one on the back, And
Speaker 1: the idea is that the ones in the front would
Speaker 1: take the air ahead of the pod and transfer them
Speaker 1: to the fans that are in the back, so it
Speaker 1: goes behind the pod so that the pod doesn't have
Speaker 1: to actually push through the air. I have no idea
Speaker 1: how that would have worked at speed, but that was
Speaker 1: the concept Musk outlined. Anyway. Musk estimated that would cost
Speaker 1: around six billion dollars to build a track between Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and San Francisco, and that a trip on this
Speaker 1: hyper loop would take about half an hour to go
Speaker 1: between those cities. If you were to drive that route,
Speaker 1: it would take you nearly six hours to do so.
Speaker 1: Musk's idea seemed to target cities that were just the
Speaker 1: right distance apart, so that the trip would take you know,
Speaker 1: a lot less time than it would driving, but it
Speaker 1: would make more sense to take the hyperloop than it
Speaker 1: would to take a flight. Musk was essentially telling the world, Hey,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be cool if we could do this? And yes,
Speaker 1: it would be cool if we could do that. It'd
Speaker 1: be cool if we could do a lot of things.
Speaker 1: But he was really hoping that someone else would jump
Speaker 1: in and try and actually do it. He said he
Speaker 1: couldn't really afford to take time away from his other companies,
Speaker 1: those being Tesla and SpaceX, and then spend that time
Speaker 1: on the hyperloop concept. Apparently, transforming transportation is not worthy
Speaker 1: of distraction, but running Twitter into the ground is. Sorry.
Speaker 1: I can only go so long while talking about Musk
Speaker 1: before I start getting snarky. Anyway, while Musk would dip
Speaker 1: his toe a little bit in the field, he went
Speaker 1: so far to launch the Boring Company, which at least
Speaker 1: initially sounded like it was meant to dig tunnels that
Speaker 1: would house hyper loop tubes. The real push was to
Speaker 1: inspire other people to embrace the concept of hyperloop and
Speaker 1: try to make their own version. One person who Musk
Speaker 1: spoke with actually before publishing that blog post was an
Speaker 1: investor named Shervin Pishevar. The two had talked about the
Speaker 1: idea privately, and Pishevar repeatedly encouraged Musk to go public
Speaker 1: with his concept, and once that happened, Pishevar founded a
Speaker 1: company initially called Hyperloop Technologies. This was in late twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: One person whom Bishevar reached out to was a former
Speaker 1: engineer for SpaceX named Brogan Bam Brogen and no, that
Speaker 1: was not the name his parents gave him, but he
Speaker 1: changed it after getting married, when he and his wife
Speaker 1: sort of merged their names together, and I think that's
Speaker 1: kind of sweet anyway, While engineers got to work trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to turn this hyper loop idea
Speaker 1: into a practical reality. Pishevar helped secure funding through various
Speaker 1: investment rounds and he did okay with that. He raised
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars in the process. But this
Speaker 1: was a very very expensive endeavor, right, tens of millions
Speaker 1: doesn't go that far when you're talking about designing and
Speaker 1: then building out a prototype of something that would be
Speaker 1: a brand new transportation infrastructure. Now, the first couple of
Speaker 1: years at Hyperloop Technologies were fairly quiet. The company was
Speaker 1: hiring engineers and building test facilities and prototypes that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. They built a test or started to build
Speaker 1: a test track out in Nevada. Eventually they would complete that.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, the company actually changed its name from
Speaker 1: Hyperloop Technologies to hyper Loop One. It also migrated away
Speaker 1: from the air bearings design that Musk wrote about in
Speaker 1: his blog, and instead they looked to a magnetic levitation design.
Speaker 1: So maglev trains have been a thing for a while,
Speaker 1: and it kind of made sense to reduce the number
Speaker 1: of brand new technologies that you were going to rely
Speaker 1: upon and replace some of them with tested and proven ones. Like,
Speaker 1: if you're using all new technologies all down the line
Speaker 1: in your very complex system, something's not going to go right.
Speaker 1: So if you look at other companies in the hyperloop space,
Speaker 1: you'll also find that most of them deviate to some
Speaker 1: degree from the original proposal. Some of them deviate wildly
Speaker 1: from the original concept of hyperloop anyway. By early twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Bambrogen had been named Chief Technology Officer or CTO, and
Speaker 1: a guy named Rob Lloyd was the CEO. But drama
Speaker 1: was right around the corner. And you can't really take
Speaker 1: corners with a hyperloop design because you need these really
Speaker 1: like long, graceful curves to be able to change direction. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the summer of twenty sixteen would see a real shakeup
Speaker 1: at Hyperloop one. Bambrogen suddenly left the company. Now, the
Speaker 1: official statement from hyper Loop one was that Bambrogen had
Speaker 1: decided to take a step back, but Bambrogen himself would
Speaker 1: contradict that statement, and he did so through a lawsuit.
Speaker 1: He was also joined by three other employees who brought
Speaker 1: charges against the company. Bambrogen accused top executives of hyper
Speaker 1: Loop one of engaging in financial shenanigans and abuse. He
Speaker 1: was essentially saying people were funneling money away from the
Speaker 1: company for their own personal benefit. He also said that
Speaker 1: he had been threatened physically by leaders at the company,
Speaker 1: and he accused his co founder Pishevar of leveraging hyper
Speaker 1: Loop one to essentially promote himself. So Bambrogen was saying
Speaker 1: that executive leadership was more concerned about using the company
Speaker 1: to upgrade their personal status rather than, you know, build
Speaker 1: a new kind of transportation. The company countersued Bambrogen and
Speaker 1: accused him of plotting to take over the company. His
Speaker 1: whole thing was that he was going to over throw
Speaker 1: leadership and take over because he wasn't satisfied with where
Speaker 1: the company was going. And it all got very melodramatic,
Speaker 1: but the parties settled out of court in late twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Bambrogen went on to found another company called a Rivo
Speaker 1: or a revo if you prefer Riivo. Ultimately, that company
Speaker 1: had trouble securing funds and it shut down in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: But anyway, let's get back to the hyper loop story.
Speaker 1: So we're going back to twenty seventeen now, because Bambrogen
Speaker 1: has left. He files his lawsuit, the company counter suites.
Speaker 1: They all settle out of court. And now in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: that's when Richard Branson's company, Virgin made a significant investment
Speaker 1: in hyper Loop one, essentially acquiring the company. So the
Speaker 1: company rebranded itself again and now called itself Virgin hyper
Speaker 1: Loop one. Later in twenty seventeen, the company lost its
Speaker 1: other co founder, that of Shervin Pishevar, the investor who
Speaker 1: was really the driving force behind the company being founded
Speaker 1: in the first place. So why was that, Well, the
Speaker 1: reason for his departure was that multiple women had stepped
Speaker 1: forward and accused him of sexual misconduct. Those were charges
Speaker 1: that he denied, and he claimed it was actually part
Speaker 1: of a coordinated smear campaign. True or not. He stepped
Speaker 1: down from the company, or was told to step down.
Speaker 1: He maintains it was his decision. Others said that he
Speaker 1: had no decision in the matter. The board of directors
Speaker 1: told him to resign, and Branson essentially took over Virgin
Speaker 1: Hyperloop one. Now, while all this was going on, the
Speaker 1: engineers at the company were still just trying to develop
Speaker 1: the technology and hoping that hyperloop would remain solid around them.
Speaker 1: Virgin hyper Loop one built a test track in Nevada,
Speaker 1: as I said, and ran multiple tests of maglev technology.
Speaker 1: In fact, in twenty twenty, the company even conducted its
Speaker 1: first and only test with human passengers inside a pod
Speaker 1: before they had all been unmanned tests. The test track
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly long enough to push the pod to the
Speaker 1: insane speeds that Musk had envisioned, but it still got
Speaker 1: up to around one hundred miles per hour or you know,
Speaker 1: like one hundred and sixty kilometers per hour, so still
Speaker 1: really fast, just not fast enough to cut a trip
Speaker 1: from you know, Los Angeles to San Francisco to just
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. The company changed names again in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: It dropped the one from its name and it became
Speaker 1: Virgin hyper Loop. And no, it would not be the
Speaker 1: last time that the company would change names. Okay, we've
Speaker 1: got some more drama to get through before we get
Speaker 1: to that. I'm gonna reduce the drama here by taking
Speaker 1: a break to thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back. We
Speaker 1: just left off in twenty twenty with Virgin hyper Loop
Speaker 1: one becoming Virgin hyper loop, and things went a little
Speaker 1: quiet after that. You know, there was still work being
Speaker 1: done at the company. There were still plans for tests,
Speaker 1: there were still plans to deploy hyperop transportation around the
Speaker 1: world in the future. In early twenty twenty two, the
Speaker 1: company announced a major change in its focus. Rather than
Speaker 1: building out a transportation system meant for human passengers, the
Speaker 1: company said the new goal was to build a way
Speaker 1: to transport cargo. Now, this was a pretty big blow
Speaker 1: to the kind of utopian view of what hyper loop
Speaker 1: was meant to be, but representatives of the company said
Speaker 1: the change was due to how the pandemic affected travel,
Speaker 1: as well as how it highlighted bottlenecks in the supply chain,
Speaker 1: and arguably this move was an effort to address a
Speaker 1: real world need. The supply chain was, without question a
Speaker 1: delicate thing, and as we learned through the pandemic, a
Speaker 1: small disruption in the supply chain could ripple out and
Speaker 1: escalate into huge problems. Also, moving stuff around carries way
Speaker 1: less risk than moving people around. With people, you have
Speaker 1: all these troublesome regulations that you have to work within.
Speaker 1: Just so you know, folks, don't get reduced to goo
Speaker 1: as you try to get them from point A to
Speaker 1: point B. Ideally, you don't want your cargo to become
Speaker 1: goo either, but if it does, it's way less of
Speaker 1: a headache than if you were moving people around. A
Speaker 1: change in focus to cargo was seen as something that
Speaker 1: would ease engineering and regulatory challenges and make the hyper
Speaker 1: loop a more practical and potentially realizable goal. Late in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, Virgin removed its branding from the company
Speaker 1: and once again it became hyper Loop one and Branson
Speaker 1: pretty much you got out of Hyperlop one at this point.
Speaker 1: So if you're keeping track, here's how the name of
Speaker 1: the company changed. It started as Hyperloop Technologies, then hyper
Speaker 1: Loop one, then Virgin hyper Loop one, then Virgin hyper Loop,
Speaker 1: then back to hyper Loop one. That's five names in
Speaker 1: ten years, which kind of reminds me of how I
Speaker 1: was hired in two thousand and seven, and I've had
Speaker 1: five or six different corporate overlords while technically I was
Speaker 1: still holding the same job, or at least I was
Speaker 1: still on the same career. There's a ship of theseus
Speaker 1: kind of thing going on here. Anyway, a few years ago,
Speaker 1: the folks at Hyperloop one projected that there'd be working
Speaker 1: hyperloops by twenty twenty or so. Obviously that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: It didn't happen from hyper Loop one, it didn't happen
Speaker 1: from any of the other dozen or so companies that
Speaker 1: are trying to make the hyper loop idea work. And
Speaker 1: since twenty twenty one, pretty much all the top brass
Speaker 1: at hyper Loop one left the company. Like, by the
Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty one, you didn't have anyone there
Speaker 1: at the company who was a founder or original executive.
Speaker 1: They had all left. The folks leading Hyperloop one by
Speaker 1: the end of twenty twenty two were just not the
Speaker 1: same people who founded or led the company in previous years.
Speaker 1: It's really hard for any company to hold itself together
Speaker 1: with that kind of massive shift in leadership. And keep
Speaker 1: in mind, this was a startup that still was just
Speaker 1: closing in on being a decade old. Ultimately, hyper Loop
Speaker 1: one was not able to hold it together. The company
Speaker 1: is now shutting down and its intellectual property will go
Speaker 1: to its largest investor, which is a company out of
Speaker 1: Dubai called DP World. The hyperloop company that was arguably
Speaker 1: both the most famous and the most likely to achieve
Speaker 1: Musk's vision has now called it quits. There are still
Speaker 1: other hyper loop related companies out there that are still
Speaker 1: working on these challenges. A couple of them have actually
Speaker 1: drifted away from really anything resembling a hyper loop and
Speaker 1: gone with more conventional forms of transportation, things like maglev
Speaker 1: trains that aren't traveling in any sort of tunnel or
Speaker 1: tube or anything like that. And you could make a
Speaker 1: decent argument to say that it's too early to call
Speaker 1: hyperloop well and truly dead, but it sure as heck
Speaker 1: isn't doing great. Even Elon Musk has moved on. The
Speaker 1: boring company is in the process of creating a network
Speaker 1: of tunnels under Las Vegas, Nevada. But rather than using
Speaker 1: pods to risk folks around, or even sleds that would
Speaker 1: risk people who are sitting in their cars parked on
Speaker 1: those sleds around, because that was an alternative, they said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we don't need to build the pods. Maybe we
Speaker 1: just build sleds that can levitate above the surface of
Speaker 1: the tube and people just sit in their cars, they'll
Speaker 1: park on a little sled and get taken to wherever
Speaker 1: they need to be, and that'll cut their transportation time.
Speaker 1: That's not happening either. Instead, the tunnels that Musk is
Speaker 1: digging under Las Vegas, it's really just a network of
Speaker 1: underground roads and Tesla vehicles are just going to drive
Speaker 1: around on those. This is not reinventing transportation. It's just
Speaker 1: building more roads. And it definitely isn't mass transit because
Speaker 1: the Tesla can only hold a few folks at a time.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have argued that the Las Vegas
Speaker 1: project is just a huge waste of time and resources,
Speaker 1: that it's not actually addressing challenges in transportation. It's just gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, make things worse because you're just adding more congestion.
Speaker 1: It's just as happening under the city as opposed to
Speaker 1: on city streets. But it's not going to make any
Speaker 1: meaningful difference in the day to day experience that people
Speaker 1: have while they're traveling through Las Vegas. And I think
Speaker 1: there's some valid criticisms there because this really isn't anything
Speaker 1: like the original vision that was pitched back in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: So it seems like Musk himself has given up on
Speaker 1: the dream. A lot of people have said that the
Speaker 1: engineering challenges are far too great for us to meet
Speaker 1: in a way that is financially practical, and that any
Speaker 1: real effort to build one of these things, even if
Speaker 1: it worked as designed, would be so prohibitively expensive that
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. Others have argued that it's inherently unsafe.
Speaker 1: That if you have this enclosed tube structure and anything
Speaker 1: happens to the tube. Let's say that there's some seismic
Speaker 1: activity that shifts elevation along part of the route, what
Speaker 1: happens to pods traveling at eight hundred miles per hour
Speaker 1: down those tubes. That is a pretty scary thing to
Speaker 1: think about. So a lot of folks have said that
Speaker 1: this idea was never really doable, at least not in
Speaker 1: the original concept, and that once you start to whittle
Speaker 1: things away so that you can make it more practical, well,
Speaker 1: the question remains, well, why are you doing this at all?
Speaker 1: Why not just build a regular maglev train, something that
Speaker 1: exists in lots of places around the world, And it's
Speaker 1: hard to come up with an answer to that that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem hokey. Anyway, I thought it was worth exploring
Speaker 1: this story of this particular company just a bit. I
Speaker 1: didn't have Hyperloop one biting the dust on my twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three Bingo card. But then again, to be honest,
Speaker 1: the reason for that is I haven't really thought about
Speaker 1: the company in more than a year, so maybe that's
Speaker 1: a good indicator as to why it called it quits
Speaker 1: this year. Anyway, I thought that merited an episode of
Speaker 1: its own. I hope you are all well, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
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