When Elon Musk sent out a challenge to the world to create a fifth mode of transportation, hundreds of teams and thousands of engineers answered. It took their weekends, vacations and spare time but thirty teams this year made it to the SpaceX Hawthorne site to test their Hyperloop pods.
Elon Musk personally opened the Hyperloop Competition himself during the weekend back in January. However, only a few were able to advance to the next round to actually test their Hyperloop prototypes in the tunnel.
Elon Musk's team had these university and engineering members go through rigorous tests with their pod prior to actually testing the pod in the one mile long tunnel. In the end, only three teams made it.
MIT, Delft University and Warr (Technical University from Munich, Germany) made it to the top three. These were also the three teams that were allowed to test their pods in the vacuum Hyperloop tube. But Delft University took home the award for best overall score. MIT also took home an award for safety and reliability, as reported by VOA News.
Warr Hyperloop was awarded for top speed at 94 kmph, as reported by the Top Examiner. They had the fastest pod in the competition. The competition is now over and many are looking to the next Hyperloop round this year, which is going to focus on top speed.
Currently, there are a number of private companies that are already developing full-scale commercial Hyperloop trains. But Elon Musk has been running the global student competition to allow and accelerate innovation.
Most of these teams are already in their senior year and are set to graduate. What comes next is now the transferring of Hyperloop knowledge to the younger group to push Elon Musk's dream of a fifth form of transportation forward.
In the meantime, watch the video below of MIT revealing their Hyperloop pod:
