Andhra may get India’s first Hyperloop between Vijayawada and Amaravati

Visakhapatnam: If all goes well, work on India’s first hyperloop between Amaravati and Vijayawada will commence in 2018, said Bibop Gresta, chairman and co-founder of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, speaking on the sidelines of the CII Partnership Summit.

What’s a hyperloop? It’s a revolutionary train service that envisions loading passengers and cargo into a pod that will accelerate gradually via electric propulsion through a low-pressure tube.

Hyperloop, an idea from Tesla CEO and SpaceX Founder Elon Musk, boasts of a transportation system which proposes to propel a pod-like vehicle through a near-vacuum tube at nearly 1,100 km per hour and above.

The pod lifts off the track using magnetic levitation and glides at aircraft speeds for long distances, owing to ultra-low aerodynamic drag.

In March last year, Los Angeles-based company Hyperloop One announced a proposal to evaluate construction of five lines in India. It said that the five proposed lines include Bengaluru to Chennai, Mumbai to Chennai via Bengaluru, Bengaluru to Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai to Delhi and Mumbai to Kolkata.

If the proposed plane comes to life, the company said that people can reach Chennai from Bengaluru in 20 minutes. The 1,102 km Mumbai to Chennai via Bengaluru line was slated to have a travel period of 50 minutes.

The company has developed a test track titled ‘DevLoop’ in the Nevada Desert in the United States of America. The company has been eyeing India as a key customer for the developing technology.

But lest one gets too excited about this possibility, it should be noted that Hyperloop is a futuristic and highly expensive technology, and is still many stages away from being commercially deployed.