Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is known for his wildly ambitious inventions and ideas and his latest one, the Hyperloop, is finally explained, Bloomberg reported.
With a $70 billion plan already in place in California for a super fast train, Musk announced his own high-speed train. He called the state's train too expensive, slow and impractical.
His Hyperloop, he said, will travel from city to city, run on solar power and reach speeds of 800 miles-per-hour, all elevated above the ground. Musk said his train could get passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes, a trip Google Maps estimates would be 13 hours by public transit, five hours by car and one hour on a nonstop flight.
Hyperloop passengers would sit in aluminum pods confined in steel tubes. The tubes would be mounted on columns about 50 to 100 yards apart, with the pods running inside them. The pods could also carry cars, Musk said.
"You just drive on, and the pod departs," Musk told Bloomberg Businessweek.
Musk discussed the details of his plan at a press conference to complement a blog post from Monday.
"You have to look at what they say it will cost vs. the actual final costs, and I think it's safe to say you're talking about a $100 billion-plus train," Musk said.
In his blog post, Musk said such a huge investment should give people an equally huge return. He listed the ideal features for such an investment into a massive public transit reform: "safer, faster, lower cost, more convenient, immune to weather, sustainably self-powering, resistant to earthquakes and not disruptive to those along the route."
Musk estimated his Hyperloop would cost $6 billion to build if it were only transporting humans, but $10 billion for a more advanced version. Tickets, he said, would also be "much cheaper" than a plane ticket. Safety is also important for such a project.
"There's an emergency brake," he said. "Generally, though, the safe distance between the pods would be about 5 miles, so you could have about 70 pods between Los Angeles and San Francisco that leave every 30 seconds. It's like getting a ride on Space Mountain at Disneyland."
Musk has made a career out of challenging business he does not agree with, or with what be believes he can do better. He con-founded PayPal to improve the banking industry, and then sold it to eBay for a fortune. He began Tesla Motors and has revolutionized electric cars with arguably the best models on the market and the most charging stations in the country. SpaceX also competes against other nations and their efforts to send supplies to the International Space Station.
While Hyperloop is another revolutionary idea for Musk, he said he must focus on his other projects for the time being.
"It is a question of finding the right person and team to get behind it," he said. "Down the road, I might fund or advise on a Hyperloop project, but right now I can't take my eye off the ball at either SpaceX or Tesla."
