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So, here's the plan - we're going to load you into a pod, and then shoot you at 700 mph (1,123 km/h) through a vacuum, taking you to your destination in minutes rather than hours.

That is the rather unlikely pitch of Hyperloop One.

But the remarkable thing that struck me on a recent trip to the project's test site in Nevada was that nobody thought it was, well, remarkable.

The Hyperloop idea, first floated by Tesla's Elon Musk, has sparked a number of projects keen to demonstrate that putting a maglev train in a vacuum tube can deliver the revolutionary transport system of the future.

Maglev - or magnetic levitation - trains, which use magnets to lift a train above rails, reducing friction and increasing possible speeds, are already in operation. One takes passengers from Shanghai to its airport at 270 mph (430 km/h).

But of the plans to make a maglev even faster by putting it in a vacuum tube, Hyperloop One - or as we must now call it following Sir Richard Branson's investment, Virgin Hyperloop One - is the most advanced.

Arriving on the site in the desert 40 miles north of Las Vegas, you can immediately see this is a costly operation to run.

A 500m (1,640ft) test track, or Devloop, has been constructed and a workforce of 300, including 200 high-calibre engineers, has been assembled.

They have run a number of tests, propelling a pod through the tube at speeds of up 387km/h (240mph).

So far, however, they have not put people on board.

Leading the engineering team is a fast-talking space scientist Anita Sengupta, recruited from Nasa where she helped develop the Mars Curiosity rover.

Having worked on what she describes as the "challenging engineering problem" of landing vehicles on other planets, she brushes aside my doubts about whether this earthbound project is realistic.

She gestures towards the white pipe snaking across the desert: "It's a realistic project because you can look around and see our development test tube."

She says the technology has already been proven and dismisses my suggestion that people might be cautious about climbing aboard.

"The Hyperloop is a maglev train in a vacuum tube," she explains.

"You can also think of it as an aircraft flying at 200,000ft [38 miles]," she added referring to the equivalent air pressure level.

"People don't have any issue flying in aircraft and people don't have any issue travelling in maglev trains. This just combines the two."

She predicts that the project will have passed through safety certification and be ready to launch a commercial operation by 2021, which seems insanely optimistic.

It is the job of the chief executive Rob Lloyd to sell the Hyperloop to the commercial and government partners who will make it a reality.

But when we met him at the giant CES tech show in Las Vegas, he appeared to think that the viability of the technology was a given, wanting to talk instead about an app that would connect future Hyperloop passengers with other modes of transport on arrival.

I tried to bring him back to earth by explaining how long it took to build infrastructure projects like Britain's HS2 high-speed rail line from London to Birmingham.

He came straight back with an idea he said could mean that the third runway at Heathrow - another project that has been many years in the works - would no longer be needed.

"You could build a Hyperloop between Gatwick and Heathrow and move between those two airports as if they were terminals in four minutes," he explained.

"That's probably less time than it takes to move between Terminal 5 and Terminal 2 today at Heathrow."
More from CES 2018:
Creating one giant seven-terminal airport without the huge cost and controversy of building a new runway might seem attractive. Sir Richard Branson, who now chairs the project, told us "a fast link between Heathrow and Gatwick would make a lot of sense". But it also sounds fanciful.

The cost of tunnelling from Heathrow to Gatwick or the planning nightmare of running several tubes across the Sussex and Surrey countryside would surely make building a third runway seem like a piece of cake.

Meanwhile Elon Musk is pursuing his own Hyperloop projects, tunnelling under Los Angeles and claiming last summer that he had "verbal approval" from the US government to build a link that would take passengers between New York and Washington DC in under half an hour.

This also sounds a deeply unlikely mission, and one suspects that the investors who have poured so much money into Musk's Tesla would be reluctant to open their pockets again.

But Rob Lloyd at the Virgin Hyperloop remains confident that at least a few governments will have the vision to take forward what he calls the first new mode of transport since the aircraft.

After years when technology innovation seems to have been all about social media - 140 characters instead of jetpacks as investor Peter Thiel puts it - such an ambitious vision is refreshing.

Even if one suspects that Hyperloop routes linking major cities are unlikely to make it off the drawing board, the project is doing a great job of making us think about a greener transport system.

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So, here's the plan - we're going to load you into a pod, and then shoot you at 700 mph (1,123 km/h) through a vacuum, taking you to your destination in minutes rather than hours. That is the rather unlikely pitch of Hyperloop One.

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As of know, Virgin Hyperloop One is the most financially powerful firm in the hyperloop market and in general the most associated with the hyperloop system. The company needs to make sure to keep it that way. Branding is an important marketing issue and Virgin Hyperloop One has a chance of becoming a monopoly in the hyperloop market as customers simply might not know any other companies in the hyperloop market other than Virgin Hyperloop One. Virgin Hyperloop One claim to develop a product for the masses that is affordable for most people, sustainable and efficient. They put themselves in a difficult position as these promises are hard to fulfil. On one hand, it makes them less credible if they cannot live up to these promises, but on the other hand if they cannot deliver a product that is faster and more sustainable than air and rail travel, there is no real point of the hyperloop. Therefore the companies bold positioning might have been the only right thing to do.

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The hyperloop will mainly serve people who commute to work everyday. People who live hundreds of miles from where they work could go home in the evening instead of spending weekdays away from home. The market on which Virgin Hyperloop One will focus depends greatly on how expensive tickets will be. Although the company as well as Elon Musk in 2014 continue to claim that the prices could be affordable to the masses, many people argue that traveling with the hyperloop will include premium prices. However as the company aims to establish the hyperloop as an everyday alternative to air or rail travel they do not wish to focus on the upper-class travellers and instead of people of all incomes who commute to work.

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Virgin Hyperloop One is in the transport market. The transport market is huge. Most people nowadays travel long distances. Some every day, some every weekend and some only occasionally. But the vast majority of people has the same preferences when it comes to traveling. Fast and not too expensive. The transport market can be divided into many fragments. Freight and human transport. Air and land transport. Long-distance and short-distance travel.

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How does Virgin Hyperloop One divide different groups of buyers within the market?

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The hyperloop could change the economy forever and therefore people´s everyday life. Cities are getting more and more crowded with cars. A new transport system is much needed. Commuting to work would be so much more convenient with the Hyperloop. Furthermore the company offers job prospects for construction workers, lawyers, scientists and highly qualified engineers.

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Regulations are much more of a problem than technology. Tests conducted by the company have shown that the technology could work. The employees are highly qualified engineers. The technical expertise within in the company is outstanding.

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The Hyperloop is expected to be a lot more expensive than originally planned. Less expensive materials around the tube and less costly energy to power the tube are needed.Taxation, especially interstate taxation in the USA needs to be taken into consideration by the company.

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It was planned by Elon Musk to install solar panels along the length of the hyperloop. This would be environmentally friendlier than airplanes and a huge competitive advantage. Experts have argued however that the solar panels would not be enough to power the hyperloop system

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Policies especially in the US are one of the biggest obstacles Virgin Hyperloop One has to overcome. It will be difficult to get different levels of government to work together and overcome complicated regulatory systems. The company needs to focus on countries like India, China or the middle east where there is less regulation.

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The last new form of transportation, the airplane, was invented 115 years ago. But a contender for the 21st century's biggest travel breakthrough, the Hyperloop, just took a step closer to becoming a reality in the United States.

Virgin Hyperloop One, which already has a working demo in Nevada and claims it will have the first passenger-bearing loop built by the mid-2020s, said on Wednesday that the first feasibility study has been completed, confirming that the concept is viable in the case of "Heartland Hyperloop" in Missouri.

Missouri, in particular, is a promising location for one surface reason: The proposed route is flat and straight.

The Missouri route runs along Interstate 70 from Kansas City to St. Louis with a stop in Columbia, Missouri, along the way. The proposed route would allow some 5 million residents of Kansas City and St. Louis to travel the roughly 250 miles across the state to the other cities in 30 minutes. Columbia, where the University of Missouri is located, could reach the two major cities in 15 minutes.

The initial cost estimate for building the I-70 hyperloop route is $30 million to $40 million per mile of track. With a route of approximately 250 miles, that equals a total price tag of $7 billion to $10 billion, though both the price per mile and total length of the route could be later adjusted. It is also important to note these costs do not include the Hyperloop technology itself, the portals, cybersecurity and external security measures that would be needed for the project.

Dozens of possible routes were proposed across the United States, including connections between Los Angeles and San Francisco; New York City and Washington, D.C.; Denver and Houston. Further feasibility studies will likely be released within the next year for states like Colorado, Ohio and Texas, said a Hyperloop One employee, but Missouri has the distinction of the first.

The feasibility study, completed by international engineering firm Black & Veatch, says that several factors make Missouri especially attractive as a candidate for the country's first hyperloop. The proposed route runs on government-owned land that is flat and straight; those petitioning for the hyperloop include business and government leaders, as well as academics; and it would provide a huge economic boost to the state by connecting its two largest population centers. Missouri is also centrally located and within reach of many of the country's highways and manufacturing plants, the report said.

How the hyperloop works

People don't know very much about hyperloops, and what they do know - usually that it has something to do with magnets and was maybe invented by Elon Musk - sounds an awful lot like science fiction. But slowly the new form of transportation is moving from concept to actual test cases as companies like Virgin Hyperloop One explore the possibility of loops in the United States and around the rest of the world.

Its potential seems world-changing. You could work in one city and live 500 miles away, or you could leave your home in the Midwest for a day trip to a beach on the Pacific. Fresh fish or organic produce could travel from the farm or docks across the country to your dinner plate more cheaply and quickly, property values could be driven up as more land outside of urban areas could be developed and an unprecedented level of connectivity around the country could allow for explosive economic development.

Travelers would go to what's called a portal, which will likely be first in transit hubs of major cities before spreading outward to smaller ones. There, they will enter a large tube and board a pod inside of it with 15 to 30 others. The tubes can be built on elevated pylons, underground, through the ocean or at ground-level, and the pod will be roughly the size of a subway car; the tube would be the diameter of a subway tunnel. The door will close behind them, along with the entrance to the tunnel.

The air from the tube will be pulled out so the environment is as close to a vacuum as possible. Airline pilots soar at 30,000 feet in part because it allows them to conserve fuel with low air resistance, and the hyperloop can do that inside the tube. Instead of moving on wheels like a train, the hyperloop will levitate magnetically, allowing it to avoid more resistance. The pod will be accelerated by using electric power and piloted by a computer, zooming forth like a gigantic, passenger-bearing air hockey puck. As it accelerates, floating in the near-airless tube, the pod will be able to coast long distances without losing momentum - like a bike downhill - and the computer will generate bursts of power as needed to maintain extremely high speed.

The pod takes elements from air and space travel, the tube from rail and civil infrastructure, and the levitation is unique, said Hyperloop One Engineer Kristen Hammer, creating a completely new way to travel.

Pods can reach speeds up to 700 miles per hour and in theory is inherently safer than other forms of transportation, because it's inside the sealed tube and has the computer pilot, removing potential for user error or most external factors. It will run on electricity and can be integrated with the power grid and other forms of renewable energy, like solar or wind. It will be able to carry people and freight, and there's the potential to build a network like the interstate highway system so that people can move around the country at the speed of a jet plane with the ease of a bus.

Reasons for skepticism

Don't expect to see Hyperloop One breaking ground in Missouri tomorrow.

"I think the U.S. will be one of the last places where you'll see this," said Rick Geddes, director of the Cornell Infrastructure Policy program.

The biggest obstacles facing hyperloop aren't the technical ones, he said, but instead policy ones. It will be difficult to get different levels of government to cooperate, to navigate complicated regulatory systems and to maintain excitement and engagement from stakeholders throughout, Geddes said. For those reasons, he said, it's likely that the first hyperloops will be in countries like India, China or the Middle East, where there's less regulatory and other hoops to jump through.

It's also important to remember that huge infrastructure projects are extremely complex, and are plagued by unseen, uncontrollable variables; ballooning costs and a so-called "optimism bias" that makes problems worse, said David Pring-Mill, the communications director of the Hyperloop Advanced Research Partnership, or HARP, a group dedicated to research and information sharing about the effects of building hyperloops.

"We haven't even really begun to think of all the ways this can change our economy, our society and the way we conduct business." -Ryan Weber, president of the Kansas City Tech Council

But if and when hyperloop does come to the United States, the benefits could be enormous.

The Missouri feasibility study projects that the cost of tickets would be cheaper than the price of gas to drive the route, and that building costs would be 40 percent lower than a high-speed rail project. They project that it wouldn't just service people already making the trip, but that it could increase by up to 80 percent so that as many as 51,000 people do the loop daily. Finally, they project that the Missouri hyperloop would generate more than $500 million in annual benefits through the combined travel time savings and accident reductions.

"We haven't even really begun to think of all the ways this can change our economy, our society and the way we conduct business," said Ryan Weber, president of the Kansas City Tech Council, a group dedicated to promoting technological growth in the city.

People would be able to live in either city and work in the other, said Andrew Smith, vice president of entrepreneurship and innovation of the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce. He commutes more than 30 minutes to get to downtown St. Louis from his suburban home, and the hyperloop would allow travel across the state in that time. This knits the cities on the route together in such a way that they'd be able to compete with much larger cities like Austin, Denver or Nashville for jobs, talent and company relocations, he said.

Hyperloop One built a working demo in Nevada, and they say the first passenger-bearing loop will built by the mid-2020s. It has signed an intent-to-build agreement in India, where the company says a finished loop will be constructed by the mid-2020.

The completion of the feasibility study for the "Heartland Hyperloop" in Missouri was the first such milestone in the United States. However, a potential headache for the company was revealed this week when the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia may pull out of billion-dollar investment deals with Richard Branson-affiliated companies and potentially suspend its work on a hyperloop feasibility study for the Middle East, though CNBC sources denied the hyperloop project was in danger of being scrapped. Branson, a minority investor in Virgin Hyperloop One and its board chairman, was one of the first business people to suspend business ties with Saudi Arabia - and HyperLoop One executives pulled out of the upcoming Saudi Future Investment Initiative conference - after the furor over the disappearance and assumed death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

"It's modern. It's the future. It puts you on the map," said Chris Zahas, an urban planner and real estate strategist who is on the board of the HARP. "If you're a city that has it or you're an earlier adopter of it, in some ways it's instant credibility that you're a forward-looking, modern city."

Uneven distribution of loop benefits

Interstate 70, the home of the proposed route, was the first interstate highway in the United States, and experts said they, too, hope the hyperloop becomes a national network. But much like the interstate highway system, the benefits of hyperloop could be distributed unevenly if care isn't taken.

Historically, we've seen that new transportation had the potential to divide people into the haves and the have-nots, Pring-Mill said. When the U.S. highway system was built, many poor or African-American communities were left behind or were even bulldozed to make the roads, he said, while in China only the rich can afford the high-speed rail system.

"It's a double-edged sword," Zahas said. "Would it potentially create winners and losers, and how do you mitigate for those negative impacts? So much of the hyperloop world has been focused on the technology itself, the speed and propulsion and whatnot, but there hasn't been enough focus on the economic impacts and so-forth."

For instance, cities with a hyperloop will benefit because businesses will suddenly have access to a much wider labor pool, Zahas said. And property prices will almost certainly go up near hyperloops because of an urban planning principle known as transit-oriented development.

But growth could come at the expense of rural areas, as businesses move away and into cities. Citizens of hollowed out, rural areas could be forced to watch hyperloop tubes cut through their towns without stopping, carrying flourishing urbanites between their cities.

Or it could go another way.

The technology could offer economic benefits to rural areas that move their produce through larger urban areas, such as St. Louis, which Smith said would happen with the Missouri route, and rural citizens within reach of a high-speed transportation network could be helped much the same way city folk would. More advanced transportation infrastructure could also drive up property values for everyone, Pring-Mill said, providing an appreciable asset for middle-Americans secular from the stock market.

The availability of hyperloop could be similar to the path that availability to a different kind of advanced tech took: flat-screen TVs, Geddes said.

At first, it may be prohibitively expensive or only available in specialized, privileged areas, but as time passes it will be improved upon and become much more accessible. Once upon a time, he said, having a flat screen TV was considered only for rich people, or before that a cell phone, or before that, a car instead of a horse.

In short, experts said, hyperloop could create a rising tide that lifts all boats if it's available to everyone.

"It's been over 100 years since humanity has had a fundamentally new mode of transportation, so it's exciting to be at this time," Geddes said, but he added, "I'm urging us to learn from the past 100 years and think early about providing universal service."

- By Edward McKinley, special to CNBC.com

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Hyperloop One takes first step on a promising test road in America's heartland

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Virgin Hyperloop One, one of the bold plans for the new form of high-speed transportation, took a big step this week in the search for a real-world test case - in Missouri, smack dab in the middle of America's heartland.

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Arguably Virgin Hyperloop One's biggest competitor in the hyperloop market is the company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT). HTT is a fierce competitor in the middle east and has already begun construction of a Hyperloop in Abu Dhabi and aims to establish the first Hyperloop there in 2020. Their strength are the good relationships with governments in places like Dubai or Abu Dhabi. These are the places where a hyperloop system is realistic and HTT seems to be slightly ahead of Virgin Hyperloop One, despite not having the same financial power. HTT is an aggressive competitor as they do not shy away from making statements like for example the one in April, saying that they own the name "Hyperloop" and that they are the original.
Naturally Virgin Hyperloop One faces competition from other travel industries. Air and rail travel are established means of travel and the company needs to persuade the public that hyperloop could be a way of traveling even faster and cheaper. There is a lot of competition in air travel that ticket prices are expected to stay low and affordable for the masses. There is no existing infrastructure for the hyperloop as opposed to railway traffic which is already pretty standard in most countries.
There is no doubt that Virgin Hyperloop One is facing competition everywhere. Inside the hyperloop market and outside. The company needs to keep shareholders interested and create awareness within the public of the immense potential that the hyperloop system has.

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HTT has already started construction work on its hyperloop in Abu Dhabi, although its plans to expand the line to connect to other cities, such as Dubai, are uncertain for now.

The Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) appeared to pour cold water on HTT at the weekend, appearing to dismiss "the validity" of plans - that it said were from HTT - to connect airports in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

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But HTT's Gresta said his company was not yet talking about developing that link.

"We were not the company that was talking about this line," he said.

"Right now, we are building a commercial line in Abu Dhabi and we have an amazing relationship with the government there, we would be happy, in the future, to expand this line after connecting Abu Dhabi, to the other emirates and we would be happy to talk to RTA about this," he said.

Asked if HTT had spoken to the RTA yet, Gresta said HTT had been focused on completing its feasibility study that it had developed with the Abu Dhabi government and was now in Phase Two - the implementation of the system - of construction work in collaboration with Aldar.

"In the future we would be happy to expand this conversation but there is nothing concrete happening right now between the two emirates.

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Battle of the hyperloops: HTT and Virgin go head-to-head in the Middle East

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HTT has already started construction work on its hyperloop in Abu Dhabi, although its plans to expand the line to connect to other cities, such as Dubai, are uncertain for now.

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The decisive question is:
Is the hyperloop system really the future or is it just a fantasy?
Regulations and safety concerns are standing in the way of Virgin Hyperloop One. The company needs to find a way to keep people investing in the company and proving to the world that the Hyperloop can start a new era of transport that is actually feasible. If Virgin Hyperloop One overcomes all its many challenges, it could become one of the biggest companies in the world and change transport as we know it forever.

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Men: Hyperloop One currently employs about 300 people. It has grown rapidly and still offers jobs in various areas such as engineering, environmental health and safety and legal and aims to employ 500 people in the foreseeable future.
Money: From 2014 till the end of 2017, Virgin Hyperloop One received funding up to 300 million dollars, meaning that investors believe in the successful implementation of the hyperloop system.
Machinery: The company is making use of the equipment by constantly testing it in the desert near Las Vegas, Nevada. Successful tests are needed so that investors keep investing in order for the company to afford the heavy machinery needed for the project.
Materials: Hyperloop One is employing a Commodity Manager to oversee the entire supply chain. In addition to the highly qualified staff who are at the top of their field, the company aims to work with the world's best suppliers to create a high quality product.
Markets: The company is often associated with the US, however it turned out that due to landscape issues and more importantly government regulation, the company focuses more and more on Asia. Regulations are less of a problem in cities like Mumbai and a new transport system is desperately needed, which is why Asia could become a more profitable market for Virgin Hyperloop One.

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This Swot-analysis considers the company and the hyperloop system itself:
Strengths:
Virgin Hyperloop One has the first-mover advantage. It is in the lead in terms of developing the hyperloop and therefore is the company most associated with the hyperloop system. The number of competitors who have the same financial power is extremely low. The hyperloop system itself could be able to move people and freights at tremendous speeds (up to 760 mph) and is less expensive and easier to build.
Weaknesses:
The biggest weakness  are safety concerns. No similar transport system has ever been known and the speed at which the hyperloop travels brings a high risk of catastrophic events if something does go wrong.
Opportunities:
The advantages of the hyperloop system are obvious. The hyperloop has potential in a society that suffers from crowded cities where traffic is often high . Especially in Asia opportunities for the hyperloop are high. Regulations are low and cities like Mumbai are in desperate need of traffic solutions. Virgin Hyperloop One could offer a lot of job opportunities for many people and has a high potential of becoming a monopoly in the hyperloop market.
Threads:
The company does not suffer so much from many competitors in the same field. Other means of travel are more of a thread. Air travel has become much cheaper and is affordable for the masses. Safety concerns might also incite people to sabotage the project.

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Although he first published the idea of the Hyperloop, Elon Musk is not part of the company. In 2017 Hyperloop One and the Virgin Group started a partnership transforming Hyperloop One into Virgin Hyperloop One.

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Virgin Hyperloop One introduction with Richard Branson

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The company Hyperloop One was founded in a garage in Los Angeles in 2014 by Shervin Pishevar. The company is primarily concerned with developing a new transport system capable of moving millions of people in a faster and environmentally friendlier way than rail or air travel.

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In 2013 entrepreneur Elon Musk published the "Hyperloop Alpha white paper" and introduced the idea of the Hyperloop system. The paper elaborates on the possibility of moving vehicles at extremely high speeds through low-pressure tubes.

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Hyperloop One revealed 11 possible US routes in 2017