Elon Musk is “Building a Hyperloop Test Track”

Brian P. Rubin -

Remember back in 2013, when Elon Musk basically said, “hey, why don’t we build magnetic rocket trains called ‘Hyperloops’” and we all said, “great idea but yeah right”? Well, it seems that Musk’s penchant for doing whatever the hell he wants at any given moment is coming through once again, as the Tesla CEO and deranged billionaire took to Twitter to casually announce that he’s just going to go ahead and build the thing.

A post on TechCrunch links back to a couple of tweets from Musk from earlier today:

Yep. There you go: we’re going to see a Hyperloop test track for companies and students to test pods in Texas. That’s a thing that’s happening, because this is America, and if a crazy rich person wants to build a gigantic magnet rocket train called the Hyperloop in the middle of Texas (“most likely,” meaning he’s not even sure where he’s building his rocket train), it’s totally legit.

And, yes, the least ridiculous part of these two tweets is the second one, where he says that he’s thinking about holding annual pod races.

Wow.

Anyway, if anyone can pull this off, it’s Musk. The man is still working on creating an affordable electric car that can see major adoption throughout the world and to limit the massive impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet’s atmosphere. Along with that, Musk is working on implementing an infrastructure to make widespread electric car usage a more viable transportation option than it is at the moment, and he’s well on his way to actually making this happen.

The man is only 43 years old, and considering how much has changed in the world of tech in less than ten years, I don’t see why he shouldn’t actually create a Hyperloop system throughout the whole world. The biggest obstacles, of course, are the individual governments of each nation, not to mention the vested business interests that will look to block him every step of the way. Those are huge obstacles, yes, but Musk has the advantage of a successful track record, a huge checkbook, and the force of his personality. Movements fail because of a lack of a clear, cohesive vision. That is not Musk’s problem.

Maybe we’ll all be riding Hyperloops and Tesla cars in just a few short years. If nothing else, I look forward to writing about the annual Podracing championship competition in 2018.

[Source: TechCrunch]