01
Under the pavement
Recently, the concept of "car road cloud" in China has been accompanied by a number of high-value investment projects, once in the secondary market rose vigorously, coupled with the news that Tesla's FSD entry schedule in China is approaching since the beginning of this year, "car road cloud" or "car road collaboration", and the market is more familiar with the bicycle intelligence has ushered in a new climax this year. However, in addition to the intelligent driving of vehicles on the ground and low-altitude flight, the future city may not have other modes of transportation, such as "hyperloop".
Eleven years ago, Musk, who was already well-known in the tech world, put his long-proposed Hyperloop concept on the table, and invited people with lofty ideals to explore it together. In his publicly available 57-page design document, the hyperloop is meant to transport aerodynamic vehicles at aviation-grade speeds, passing through almost vacuum pipes to transport people or goods at speeds of up to 800 miles (1,287 kilometers) per hour, which are either erected high in the air or sunk into the ground — think of it as the world's fastest maglev train, but in a vacuum tube running at high speed.
Musk also calculated that if the hyperloop only carries passengers, it will cost only $6 billion, and if it is to carry people, goods and vehicles, it will cost $7.5 billion, the main difference is the choice of transportation and the construction of tunnels. However, he said that this mode of transportation is only suitable for cities less than 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) away, and that it is better to fly beyond that.
At the time, public opinion was still very skeptical, because if you think about it, 800 miles per hour has already caught up with the speed of sound, and if this idea came true, it would only take 30 minutes to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco, twice as fast as an ordinary commercial jet and four times faster than a train.
But it does have the potential to land, although it wasn't Musk himself who first practiced the concept.
02
The domestic hyperloop has long been in shape
In 2014, Pishevar, a well-known Silicon Valley investor, and former SpaceX engineer Bam Brogan co-founded the hyperloop start-up "Hyperloop One". Two years later, Hyperloop One conducted its first trial in the Nevada desert of the United States, reaching speeds of 180 kilometers per hour in two seconds; In 2017, the world's first full-system hyperloop test was completed on a vacuum test track with a total length of 500 meters and a diameter of 3.3 meters, with a top speed of about 310 kilometers per hour and 000 acceleration in 1.9 seconds.
Richard Branson, another tech enthusiast with "money power" and founder of the Virgin Group, invested in Hyperloop One as soon as it was successfully piloted, and renamed it Virgin Hyperloop.
For example, the Virgin Hyperloop, which was originally planned to build a hyperloop connecting Dubai and Abu Dhabi, could theoretically shorten the journey time of more than an hour to 12 minutes. Even by the end of 2022, nearly a billion dollars have been spent, and the company is about to go out of business, and there are no projects to officially start construction and operation anywhere in the world. The Virgin Hyperloop's only manned test had a top speed of only 100 miles per hour (161 km/h), far below what was originally envisaged.
Still, the 2020 manned test is considered an important milestone in the Hyperloop concept, with only two passengers traveling 535 meters per hour at 107 miles (172 kilometers) per hour in a maglev track, vacuum tube-based transportation system, and the experience ended in 15 seconds.
In addition to the Virgin Hyperloop, the Japanese academic community and the Canadian TransPod company have all aimed at the Hyperloop, but they are all thunder and rain, and the technical route has not yet been determined.
However, in China, where railway lines are more complete and transportation infrastructure is better, the implementation of hyperloop has inadvertently run to the forefront.
In February this year, the Third Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry completed the test of stable suspension of the superconducting maglev "high-speed train" in the low-vacuum pipeline on the superconducting maglev test line in Datong, Shanxi, and refreshed the previous speed record in the test line with a total length of 2 kilometers and a pipeline diameter of nearly 6 meters, and also verified the good coordination of vehicles, pipelines and tracks, as well as a strong power system and safety control system, which is considered to lay a technical foundation for the future thousands of kilometers per hour of super high-speed rail.
Although there is no specific data, considering that the superconducting maglev test line, which was only completed in November last year, is currently the longest and largest hyperloop test line in the world, there is still a lot of way to go, and the test should still be in the preliminary stage.
However, the technical route of the mainland is still relatively clear, and it is also the "magnetic levitation + low vacuum" mode in the general direction. Maglev is a train system that is different from the wheel-rail train wheel-rail system, Chen Jiangong, an expert from the School of Civil Engineering of Chongqing University, introduced that because the traction force of the maglev train is electromagnetic force rather than friction force, compared with wheel-rail high-speed rail, the main advantages of high-speed maglev are faster speed, less energy consumption, lower resistance, and less wear and tear on the line. But the power of the train can come from electromagnetic force or from high-temperature superconductivity.
High-temperature superconducting high-speed maglev is another technical route of magnetic levitation, and the main difference between it and electromagnetic levitation technology is that it relies on liquid nitrogen instead of power to achieve suspension and drive. Southwest Jiaotong University, a leader in high-speed rail technology research and development in mainland China, has been specializing in this field since 1997, and with the progress of superconducting materials, technology research and development will accelerate iteration.
There is also a technical focus on maintaining a vacuum in the pipes. Musk's idea is relatively simple: vacuum the pipeline, use magnetic levitation technology to levitate the transportation warehouse, and the tail of the transportation warehouse is powered by a turbine, "because the resistance of the train forward is very small, so only a small amount of power is needed to make the train gain high speed."
But in reality, if this system is to be used to carry people, then at the same time as the pipeline vacuum, it is necessary to ensure the pressure and oxygen retention in the transportation warehouse, and also consider the details of the passenger getting on and off the train. How to maintain a vacuum state in a high-temperature and high-pressure environment, and how to achieve the safe stopping and starting of high-speed trains remain to be discussed.
03
From concept to commercial promotion
Focusing on technology alone is not enough, investment, policy support and the mature development of business models are indispensable. Otherwise, Musk would not have announced his conceptual design blueprint, but recognized the difficulty of commercialization of this model, and turned to a more pragmatic urban tunnel plan, rather than pursuing high speed.
The Boring Company, founded by Elon Musk, pursues no longer "hyperloop", but "tunnel transportation". Boredom claims to build a new underground three-dimensional rail system that would allow the city to extend endlessly, using traditional tunneling technology at a much lower cost than the $84 million to $121 million per mile cost of the Virgin Hyperloop.
But the problem is that the tunnel is now actually operating only the ring road in Las Vegas, Nevada, and only Tesla cars can drive, and other brands of cars are not compatible at all. Even so, the Las Vegas Loop, which was completed in 2021, has successfully transported more than 2 million passengers, which is a typical case.
The Las Vegas Circle currently has five stations, including the airport, and was originally planned to be an underground transit system with 29 miles of tunnels and 51 stations, and now plans are being made to expand to 65 miles and 69 stations.
How do you transport these cars? Originally, TBC designed an electric sled transportation plan, which placed the vehicle on a sled-like transportation board, traveled through the tunnel at a speed of 200km/h, and used a device similar to an elevator shaft to send the vehicle up when it reached the station; Later, it was changed to a car with guide wheels to drive in the tunnel like a four-wheel drive vehicle, but this method required the driver to pay for the installation himself, and the experience was not good enough when turning, so it was abandoned.
At present, cars in the tunnel are mainly traveling in the way of FSD (Tesla Full Self-Driving Technology), but in the narrow tunnel, what should I do if the FSD fails? How to dredge the congestion after the accident?
The most important aspect of TBC's project is that its business model no longer relies solely on government subsidies and private investment, but cooperates with the local government to co-invest and operate. But for now, TBC's greatest potential may not be to build a three-dimensional transportation network, but to dig tunnels. Unlike the tunnels currently needed for the subway, Musk is digging "small tunnels" with a diameter of 12 feet (about 3.7 meters), and with his own improved tunnel boring machine, TBC can build tunnels faster and cheaper than any other company. But how to upgrade from a "small tunnel" to a "hyperloop", the landing schedule is not necessarily.