How does travelling from Dubai to Abu Dhabi in 12 minutes, or Dubai to Muscat in 20 minutes, sound? Or even Abu Dhabi to Doha in just 17 minutes? Well, that could soon be a reality.Â
Elon Musk’s Los Angeles company, Hyperloop One, is reinventing transportation by developing the world’s first Hyperloop, an integrated structure to move passengers and cargo between two points immediately, safely, efficiently and sustainably. They are currently testing the mode of transport in the Nevada desert, and expect to perform a public trial in the first half of 2017.
Yesterday, they unveiled their route of the region, and the expected time to travel between stations, which expects to drop the travel time between the 10 major Gulf cities to under one hour.
They also revealed the first images of the Nevada Development Site, and the very first pictures of the system, known as the DevLoop.
The DevLoop has a diameter of 3.3m, making it pretty snug, but is expected to travel at an incredible 1,200 km/h – the maximum speed of an A380 is 1,020 km/h. As terrifyingly fast as that sounds, the company maintains that the benefits of Hyperloop include higher standards of safety than a passenger jet, close to half the construction and lower maintenance costs than high-speed rail and energy usage that is similar to a bicycle per kilogram-kilometer.Â
Would you use it? Let us know @CosmoMiddleEastÂ