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Hyperloop Tech Race Comes Down to Two Companies

The two companies, Hyperloop Technologies and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, are in a close race to complete the first hyperloop.

(TNS) -- Do you want to take a trip to San Francisco? No problem. The hyperloop can get you there in half an hour.

The hyperloop is "a low-pressure tube in which levitating capsules carry passengers" at 760 miles per hour, "nearly the speed of sound," says The Wall Street Journal.

Two companies, Hyperloop Technologies and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, compete to create the first hyperloop.

Hyperloop Technologies is building a test track north of Las Vegas while rival company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is waiting for its permit to begin building a track in central California. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies says its track will be ready by 2018.

"We look at it as a metro system," says Dirk Ahlborn, head of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. The company says it envisions a network "in the United States and elsewhere, he says, calling trains a 'dinosaur industry' and high-speed rail too expensive," says National Geographic.

Which company will win the race?

The idea of the hyperloop originated in 2013 by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.

National Geographic asks, "Could the sonic, levitating, zero-emissions Hyperloop -- potentially as fast as a plane, cheaper than a train, and usable in any weather -- really be the future?"

 

©2016 The Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, Calif.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.