One of the startups developing Elon Musk’s Hyperloop technology is finally opening up about its plans to build a functioning Hyperloop test track in downtown Los Angeles. Hyperloop Technologies, not to be confused with another LA-based startup Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, named its CEO on Wednesday and said that the company plans to open its test track next year.
Rob Lloyd, the former president of Cisco, will now be leading the company. Formerly the company was under the leadership of Brogan Bambrogan who served as the interim CEO.
The company aims to complete its Hyperloop test track next year, but Lloyd said that it will be a few more years before the company has one that will travel hundreds of miles between cities.
“Three years from now I believe that we will be designing and constructing the first two or three production Hyperloop systems in the world. Five years from now we will be moving goods and people,” Lloyd said during an interview with CBS on Wednesday.
In 2013, Musk proposed the idea for a transportation alternative where passengers travel at 700 miles per hour in pods through vacuum-like, low-pressure tubes.
He called it “the fifth mode” of transportation and encouraged companies to take on the challenge. Hyperloop Technologies is one of several firms that embraced the mission head-on. It says it’s creating a more energy-efficient mode of transport that will cost less than half of any high-speed rail project.
Given the vision’s sci-fi nature and technological challenges, turning the concept into a reality will be no small feat.
In a blog post, Lloyd outlined the company’s latest progress in building out the tech to make Hyperloop a reality: compressor tech that can operate at high speeds and low pressures with a wind tunnel, levitation tech that would lift the pod off rails, and advancements in the architecture of the tube that would transport pods carrying passengers.
The company says a working prototype of a two-mile test loop will be ready at the end of 2016 or early 2017.
