Hyperloop One, one of the companies working to make Elon Musk’s high-speed vacuum train dream a reality, sees potential for working with Skolkovo startups on the ambitious project, the U.S. company’s vice president said Thursday.
Knut Sauer (right) talking to Nikolai Grachev, head of Skolkovo's energy efficiency cluster, during the session. Photo: Sk.ru.
Knut Sauer, vice president of Hyperloop One, came to the Skolkovo innovation centre this week for the annual Startup Village, a two-day open-air event aimed at tech entrepreneurs and investors from around the world.
“There is lots of potential for collaboration with startups, especially what I’ve seen today,” said Sauer, speaking at a conference session titled Transport of the Future.
The Startup Village includes an exhibition section, the Startup Bazaar, showcasing Skolkovo resident startups working in a wide range of fields, from IT to biomedicine and energy-efficient solutions.
“Hyperloop is primarily a research and development company and we will definitely partner with other R&D companies,” said Sauer.
Hyperloop One is currently working on a magnetic levitation train system in which carriages – or “capsules” – will speed through an airless, depressurised environment, significantly reducing air resistance. The company says it could reduce the travelling time between cities hundreds of kilometres apart, like Moscow and St. Petersburg, to 20 minutes. Currently, the fastest train from Moscow to St. Petersburg takes four hours.
The company has already held talks with Russian Railways (RZD), the state rail monopoly, on the possibility of introducing the technology to Russia.
Sauer said the system will not just be fast, it will be safe - because it’s automated and elevated, meaning no level crossings - and environmentally friendly. It expects to be transporting people by 2021, he said.
For now, the company has built an 800-metre test track at a site outside Las Vegas, where on May 11, it carried out a propulsion open-air test. A company video feting the successful test promises: It's going to happen much quicker than anyone imagines, and when it does, the world will never be the same.
Many were curious to hear about the Hyperloop project. Photo: Sk.ru.
That does not necessarily mean change for the worse for existing high-speed rail companies, Sauer told his fellow panelists, who included Valentin Gapanovich, senior vice president of innovation development at Russian Railways.
“It can’t replace existing high-speed networks - it will complement them; but it will replace mid-range civil aviation,” said Sauer.
SNCF, the French rail network, is actively investing in Hyperloop, as it sees itself not as a competitor, but as a future operator of the the high-speed system, he said, adding: “That’s how we see RZD.”
Gapanovich said that Russian Railways had met in March with representatives of Hyperloop. “We told them we’d see how their pilot project ended and then make a decision,” he said, smiling.
The Russian Railways innovations tsar showed a photo of an elevated train in the Moscow region town of Ramenskoye back in 1986, which shared some of the principles of Elon Musk’s vacuum train dream.
Gapanovich said a test ground had been set up and an experimental run had taken place on February 25, 1986, before work was stopped on the project “for various reasons.”
On May 22, 2014, RZD revived the project, he said, signing an agreement of cooperation with Rosatom, the state nuclear corporation, to develop magnetic levitation transport.
“We’re developing this topic, not only for passenger trains, but also for cargo,” said Gapanovich. “We hope for a certain breakthrough in this area.”
Russian media has reported in recent weeks that authorities are considering a system like the Hyperloop line to transport cargo between Russia’s Far East and the west of the country, as well as to connect the north and south. On May 20, RBC news agency quoted Anatoly Zaitsev, head of St. Petersburg Railway Innovation Development Centre, as saying that the first system could link Baltic Sea ports in St. Petersburg with terminals in Moscow.
Zaitsev was quoted as saying that if in the West, the costs of such a project were estimated at $21 billion, in Russia, it could be implemented for nearly half of that: from $12 to $13 billion.
The same day, Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said Russia was ready “like no other country” for the implementation of such a project.
"Similar work to the Hyperloop project has been going on [in Russia] for quite a long time,” Sokolov was quoted as saying by the TASS news agency.
“Do we expect to take any action? In theory, yes, and our transport strategy through 2030 envisages the use of new developments in transport, including new means of transport."
Sokolov is expected to meet with representatives of Hyperloop One, whose investors include the Caspian Venture Capital fund set up by Russian businessman Ziyavudin Magomedov, at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that this year runs June 16-18.