Elon Musk is now set to make his own Hyperloop after being an inspiration for startups, as per the latest report by Bloomberg.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO is said to be planning to build the Hyperloop portion of his planned underground tunnel-based Hyperloop network himself, rather than relying on outside partners who are already developing commercial Hyperloop technology.
He briefed his research conducted with his team at Space Exploration Technologies Corp that demonstrated the system’s viability and offered it as a gift to the startup ecosystem. He revealed this saying that he needs to be “focussed” on SpaceX and Tesla.
While the other startups raced to develop their hyperloops, the SpaceX and Tesla CEO’s twitter post claiming to have received “verbal government approval” hit as a shock to the community.
While several of them hoped that Elon would just dig a tunnel and probably choose them for infra, a person close to Musk told that he planned on making the entire thing right from scratch.
Musk also holds a trademark for “Hyperloop” through SpaceX, which could be used to prevent other companies from using the term, according to U.S. public records.
“While we’re encouraged that others are making some progress, we would like to accelerate the development of this technology as fast as possible,’’ Musk’s Boring Co., a venture created to build roads that run through underground tunnels, said in a statement. “We encourage and support all companies that wish to build Hyperloops and we don’t intend to stop them from using the Hyperloop name as long as they are truthful.’’
At the end of August, SpaceX will host its second Hyperloop Pod design competition, which sees teams including university research groups facing off with prototype pods of their own making on SpaceX’s test track.