Elon Musk’s Big Lie About the Hyperloop Has Just Been Exposed.

His only objective would have been to sabotage a Californian high-speed rail project.

Are you familiar with the Hyperloop concept? It is an industrial research project proposed in 2013 by Elon Musk.

In its initial concept, the Hyperloop is a vactrain consisting of a double elevated tube in which capsules carrying passengers and/or goods move. The interior of the tube is under low pressure to limit air friction.

The capsules were supposed to be elevated by air cushions, but this was quickly replaced by electromagnetic levitation systems, as the tubes in which the vehicles travel are emptied of most of their air. The capsules are propelled by a magnetic field created by linear induction motors placed at regular intervals inside the tubes.

To make California and even the world dream, Elon Musk and the promoters of the Hyperloop had put forward that such a system installed between the center of Los Angeles and the center of San Francisco would make it possible to connect the two cities in less than 30 minutes, that is to say, the course of 551 km at more than 1,102 km/h, much faster than an airplane which covers, in theory, this same distance in 35 minutes at the speed of 885 km/h, but in one hour and a half in practice.

With such promises coming from the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, it was obvious that this would make the world salivate.

At the end of 2017, Elon Musk made an astonishing statement: “Public transportation sucks.” On this occasion, he declared all his disgust towards this yet virtuous mode of travel. Buses, streetcars, trains, and subways would be “extremely painful” to use, he explained at a conference.

“We are exposed to a lot of unknown people, among whom could be a serial killer", said the billionaire,” who declared that he did not understand the interest of a system “that does not start from where you want to go, does not arrive where you want to arrive and does not leave at any time.”

At the time of these statements, no one had taken the opportunity to confront Elon Musk with his contradictions. If public transport sucks so much, why would anyone want to cram 30 passengers into particularly cramped capsules?

Meanwhile, many countries have given in to the temptation of the Hyperloop. In France, everyone was already dreaming of connecting Paris to Marseille in 40 minutes... The French government even subsidized the Toulouse base of Hyperloop TT, one of the companies that responded to Elon Musk's call for tenders.

Despite the installation of a few dozen meters of tubes and the arrival of a capsule in 2019, the project is stalling. Worse, at the end of 2021, the construction of a one-kilometer-long runway, which was supposed to allow for the launch of the first tests, has been abandoned. Slowness, opacity, broken promises: everything seems to be explained in the light of a revelation by Time.

Elon Musk never intended to develop the Hyperloop, but simply wanted to sabotage a Californian High-Speed Rail project

According to the American weekly, Elon Musk would have confided to his biographer that he had no intention of actually building the Hyperloop. He would have only developed the concept to convince the Californian authorities to abandon the local high-speed train project.

Without knowing if this sleight of hand had a real influence or not, the high-speed train line that was supposed to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco was indeed abandoned in February 2019.

Between Elon Musk and California, the marriage seemed to be floundering for a few years. Very critical of the policies applied by the state, the leader ended up expatriating in late 2020 to Texas, taking Tesla in his luggage. In any case, Elon Musk helped sabotage a public transportation project that would have avoided the release of significant amounts of greenhouse gases.

More than a hundred flights connect Los Angeles to San Francisco every day, with the plane completing the trip in one hour, compared to seven to eight hours by bus and more than 10 hours by train. The California high-speed train promised to connect the two cities in only two hours and would have diverted 90 to 100 million passengers from the roads and airports each year.

This climatic trick of Elon Musk, who presents himself as very concerned about greenhouse gas emissions, will in any case cause a lot of ink to be spilled in the weeks and months to come, giving Musk's detractors plenty of material to criticize.