The HYPERLOOP Will Never Work, Here's Why 

Hey, whilst I agree with the sentiment that Hyperloop won't ever be viable, your calculations at 2:11 are wrong. Lets take the $84 million per mile figure from the article. As 1 mile = 1.6km, this is $84 million per 1.6km. To convert this to $/km, you need to divide by 1.6. Therefore, it would be $52.5 per km. It makes no sense for the cost per kilometre to be greater than the cost per mile, as a kilometre is a shorter distance. You multiplied when you should have divided. The correct numbers are between $52.5 million per km and $75.6 million per km. Hope this helps.

as smarter people than me already said "Elon Musk keeps trying to reinvent the wheel and for some reason he insists it should have corners"

TLDR: Wheel is cheep, Wheel is easy, Wheel is probably staying.

"Maglev technology was gaining traction" I hope not, isn't the whole point of a maglev that it's raised to reduce friction?

As a Hungarian I appreciate that shout out, but have to say the data is incorrect. The max speed of HUngarian trains is sometimes: No

"Maglev technology was gaining traction.." I assert sir, that this was a poor choice of words.

I have a billion dollar idea, I call it the T-Rain. It’s a series of pods which can transport passengers or freight along a network I like to call T-Racks.

"People are going to think for more than 5 seconds" thats where you're wrong buddy

It's really funny that the more than a 100 year old technology of TRAINS is still the best solution we have for land transportation, and it's so often being ignored in favor of worse alternatives.

As a hungarian, I can assure everybody who is wondering that our local trains' max speed is yes, indeed.

Update: Indian Hyperloop Project is dropped.

Also: Metal fatigue. Planes can last decades before it’s an issue. The “pods” won’t-more cabin pressure required bc vacuum-. The tube will also have fatigue. Good luck inspecting or replacing that.

As a Shanghai local the maglev to me is nothing more than an attraction. We don’t consider it public transport at all, we consider it a cool thing to do on a kid’s birthday. This is mainly because there is actually a very good public metro network from the maglev station to the airport that is 20 times cheaper. Sure the maglev is much faster (8mins compared to 50mins), but they come every 30mins whereas the metro comes every 3 mins, so the difference is actually small(15mins). And no I will not plan my trip just so I can catch the maglev, because I am spoiled by our very reliable metro system and I expect to get onto a train in under 5mins whenever I go to a station. So as far as transport within the city goes, the only way to make people use your Maglev is to monopolize the route. But this is impossible if you’re connecting an airport with a busy existing station, even in China. I guess that’s why so many of these shit projects have to end at conference centers lol.

I guess you could say that Hyperloop is nothing more than a pipe dream.

"Maglev was gaining traction" I see what you did there

Five years ago I interviewed a spokesperson for the Tesla hyperloop, when it was still a Musk thing. I asked what the net power usage per KM would be. I was told with absolute confidence that it would have a net positive energy output, because the heat generated in braking would outstrip all the other power requirements, including getting the thing rolling in the first place. It was at that moment that I came to doubt the seriousness of the project

7:30 Dude... everyone knows that in a vacuum everything is cheaper because no one can hear the price!

I'm not an engineer but it seems obvious to me that making two very straight steel beams is expensive, but making a large tube much bigger than the gap between those two beams, to a much higher precision, and it has to hold a vacuum, would at the very least, be much more expensive, not less expensive.

"Ultra expensive, ultra exclusive, rich people transport" is *everything* Elon Musk does. He's selling a dream of affluence. He's a 'transport influencer' selling dreams.

Ahh yes the hyperloop! All the disadvantages of an airplane (long boarding times, insane security, being stuck in a can like a sardine) without any advantages (speed, terrain independence, costs). Truly one of Elon Musk's finest "achievements".

I’d like to see them demonstrate safety and escape procedure during a rapid depressurization

To all Elon Musk fans: just because some of his crazy ideas have been good and successful, doesn't mean that every crazy idea is like that. Fundamentally bad ideas deserve to be criticized.

I get the feeling that sinking wealth into go-nowhere projects is just a cute way to avoid paying taxes.

So Elon wants to cushion the Hyperloop with air to make it float. Then how will the chamber stay a vacuum when, you know, *you're constantly pumping air into it?*

I think we should just start building teleporters everywhere. I mean, I have a CGI render of what one might look like and I reckon I could build them in every home for £10 each, so why not?

All they had to do is repeat Japan’s bullet train, that was made on already proven concept technology instead of fantasy unproven technology. AND WAS MADE IN THE 60s!

I find it funny how everyone still credits elon musk for this, when he basically just brainstormed on twitter. Meanwhile, he put none of his own money into researching and developing it... probably because he figured out early on that it was a dumb idea and abandoned it. Regular high-speed rail like Japan's Shinkansen is far more scalable and cost-effective.

>Maglev: $1 billion >Hyperloop: $0.25 billion >the Hyperloop is maglev + vacuum tube Guys, guys, what if... what if we built a hyperloop, for mad savings compared to maglev... but skipped the vacuum tube, for mad savings compared to the regular Hyperloop... And had regular maglev trains run on that? BRILLIANT INNIT

I'm from India and particularly the state where the hyperloop was supposed to be built (Maharashtra). Thankfully, the governments changed and the new Chief Minister said that the whole thing is a fucking joke and decided to "put it on hold" (Indian for 'cancel it'). This whole thing was a idiotic project and it made no sense. The cities that would've been connected by it (Mumbai and Pune) are barely 120 km apart. On top of that, the central government is making deals with Japan so why not just buy their Shinkansen and run it between the two cities? I'm glad this whole thing got cancelled coz, as you said, it was just a waste of tax payer money.

As a german, I started out jealously thinking "why don't we do that?" and then I quickly realized "because we can't. And neither can they but they have the spirit to still try and miserably fail".Then I saw the panel gaps and swore to never set foot in an american vacuum design of any sort

We can't even maintain roads properly, how are we going to be able to maintain a super long vacuum tube?

The story about Shanghai’s maglev is fascinating and isn’t as simple as you said: So China’s HSR system as we knew of today was simply non-existent when the Shanghai maglev was being built, and the reason was - surprisingly, infighting between officials. In the late 1990s, it was clear that China will eventually need some sort of high-speed transportation network, but officials within the Ministry of Railways was split between a conventional high-speed railway system or a maglev one. Maglev was still largely untested at the time, but it was gaining some traction as the rising new technology, plus it has some benefits of being untested (many major shortcomings we know of today appear only after the Shanghai maglev was built); plus after all China did not have any experience with conventional high-speed train at that time - both require importing foreign technology, which levels the playing field by quite a bit. China still needed to test the feasibility of a large maglev-based high-speed transportation system, and for that purpose they chose Shanghai, which happened to need a line between the city center and the new Pudong Airport (about 20 miles apart) and was (and still is) the most economically capable city in China. The rest is history. Siemens won the bid, the maglev was constructed, and it operated at a huge loss, essentially ending all hope for the maglev faction within the Ministry of Railways. Then we have the Chinese HSR system that we know of today. An extra note: if you look at the official Chinese title for the Shanghai maglev (上海磁悬示范运营线), what often ends up missing in the translation is that it is a demonstration line (hence 示范). So essentially operating at a loss actually fulfills its purpose - it proves that maglev is probably not as a good idea as people once thought it was.

It’s really sad to see California high speed rail got screwed over by hyper loop.

The idea of a vacuum tube with a train inside it is just intuitively stupid to me. Not only would the maintenance costs be astronomical, but there would be extreme safety concerns as well. If the cabin ever lost pressurization, the people inside could suffocate or die from the pressure differential. Not to mention the entire loop could just implode at any moment. It'd be a deathtrap.

Shout out to elon musk for continuing to invent absolutely nothing

The Shanghai monorail is really just a tourist thing now. True story. One time visiting Shanghai I was adamant I’d take the maglav. My buddies instead grabbed the normal city train -which is fast, regular and excellent. After paying a LOT more than they did I experienced a huge wait and muck about only to basically sit in a train and arrived way later than they did and way further from my final destination. They were settled in with beers and laughing when I arrived in my didi from the maglav station. Really a one time thing, not a getting anywhere thing.

I remember when I had to watch TV and play video games on vacuum tubes. They were big, heavy, potentially dangerous if imploded, and expensive, and rarely ever exceeded 32 inches. While some may not consider it a valid comparison, I can't imagine large scale tubes that hold a vacuum are going to be that simple, or cheap.

I always thought an air cushion in a near-vacuum was a splendid idea

Nothing will ever be cheaper than just putting down two pieces of parallel steel. Rail is just so simple and effective. I wish people could appreciate what an engineering feat it is to achieve so much with such economy of design.

Once i saw the news that he admitted he only made this shenanigans to stop HSR legislation, i knew Adam gonna have a field day on this topic.

You know when I was ten, my traffic solutions were flying cars, and cars big enough for other cars to go beneath them. Apparently the minds of these billionaires didn’t grow up from that kid phase where you draw everything that looks cool. Seeing my kids drawings as something that would pop up in the minds of these billionaires is just bizarre.

I want to add one more aspect: the Hyperloop vehicles are planned to operate in near vacuum to reduce aerodynamic drag. Humans need air to breathe, at a certain pressure. So the vehicle must be pressurized, by more than an airplane that operates with some residual air pressure around it. Now the interesting thing: how do you react to a rapid decompression of the cabin? An airplane can quickly descend to a safe altitude, hence pressure level. It’s not trapped in a vacuumed steel tube…

“I fear no man, but that thing (normal train) ... it scares me.” - Elon Musk, probably

"Hungarian Local: Max speed: yes" I'm fkkn dead

Giant vacuum tube? Imagine how much faster it would be if they built it using a transistor!

"Hungarian local, Distance: short, max speed: yes" 🤣

Does Elon Musk even know what 'open source' means? You can't make an *idea* open source. The idea predated him. He didn't invent it, cannot and did not patent it, and it's an idea so it can't be copyrighted. Open source is when you create something (which he didn't do) and then release it under a copyright license that allows others to use it. Ideas can't be copyrighted and he didn't come up with it so he can't patent it. The only thing he came up with was the awful name, and given he was never trading as "hyperloop" it's not even a trademark, arguably. So really all he did was take an existing idea, claim credit for it, and then try to look like a nice guy by "letting" others use it for free. Everyone could ALREADY use it for free, because it wasn't new at all in any way, shape or form!

1 year later we have... a coffin of a tunnel where Teslas barely move. The vacuum chamber was dismounted (and never provided enough vacuum) and the tests never went faster than trains.

Honestly, I've been on a streak with watching Adam Something videos where he perfectly annihilates stupid ideas like this, they're just so good

I have an idea to remedy this shortcoming of the Hyperloop. It's like a train, but flies. Not multiple carriages/pods but a single one for structural robustness. Maybe more like a bus that flies. Like an air bus. You wouldn't use a tube because flight would allow you to travel directly from location to location. Since you don't have a tube enclosing it, you could put wings on it to levitate it in combination with a high speed fan system for propulsion. Since aerodynamic drag at high velocity would be such an issue, you would ideally need to operate the majority of the transit time at a high altitude to minimize air density. Due to size and the velocity at operation, it would be necessary to have a fairly large dedicated port for arrival/departure. Perhaps a series of long road-like strips for accelerating and decelerating for these phases. I just have this sense that it'll really catch on, and then we won't miss the Hyperloop promise. Such a shame that there's currently no high-speed mid/long distance alternatives to trains yet.

Builder: How fast do you want your train? Hungarian gov: Yes.

Fun fact: At one point Ukraine's 2016-2019 Transportation Minister V. Omelian floated the idea of building Hyperloop in Ukraine. There were some meetings, but in the end this pet project was nothing but empty hype. Omelian has been out of the spotlight for a long time, but the public still refers to him as "Hyperloopovich" :D

For a scifi short story I had a hyperloop, which I called a Vactrain. In order to make it plausible I did the following: 1)Its made clear this is expensive and not something used every day (it takes people from the middle of London directly to an Airport miles outside the city in a few minutes, that's it) 2) you sit in a special acceleration chair that spins 180 degrees at the half way point (pod speeds up for half then breaks for half) you are fully strapped in the whole way. 3) the entire thing is deep underground, below the tube lines. 4) each pod is loaded/unloaded via an airlock membrane.

The Swiss thought of building a vacuum meglev Train underground 45 years ago. There is a reason that even the Swiss (which are pretty good at expensive infrastructure projects) did not build this thing.

Are you saying there's no science Santa Clause that can make every technological fantasy come true ???

The aerotrain was abandoned not only because Maglevs were "better" but also because France began to invest in research and development for another "fast" train, the TGV 001 (it was not yet electric but it worked with a helicopter gas turbine, just like the aerotrain) but, the oil crisis of 1973 resulted in an enormous extra cost on gas, the TGV was able to switch "quickly" to an electric motor, not the aerotrain.

5:08 I love how they slapped a photo of a kid looking out a window over an artists rendition of the Mars rover landing. Like "We've made so much progress _your_ kid could be looking at a Mars rover landing. We're not being over optimistic at all!"

The thing is also that the Maglev used in Shanghai was initially developed in Germany, where due to high costs and limited applications, the project was abandoned and the trains sold off.

Hungarian local train speed: yes Czech local train speed: almost

1:07 'Maglev technology was gaining traction.' That's the most ironic word pun of this video.

I believe the Germans made a hyper loop in the 1940's very cost effective at transportation but due to concerns their competitors put it out of commission. I think they called it the V3 project.

One small thing that always puzzled me is the technical aspects of a huge vacuum tube with a train inside it. For those who work in Physics, this has to be a subject to laugh about. I'm not going to talk about the construction of such a tube but the maintenance of this kind of infrastructure is an absolute nightmare and extremely dangerous to be used daily and extremely expensive.

Where the whims of investors and 'idea guys' are prioritised over engineers.

6:41 Because they don’t want poor people to use these things. That’s what regular trains are for.

9:30 This is true for all of Musks "ideas". It's always been about making things for people as rich as him, pitched as something for everyone. For example his exclusive car tunnels to get past the regular traffic, or earth to earth rocket travel, or even Tesla itself. Other car manufacturers have budget models, Tesla too, but the cheapest Tesla is about 80% more expensive than some of its competitors.

I have no problem watching the UAE pay for one of these in Dubai. I enjoy their indoor ski resorts and their air-conditioned bus stops. They are running out of ways to blow their money, and Elon Musk has got them covered

Okay, something that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If I'm travelling in a metal tube anyway, why does that vehicle need windows in the first place? There's not exactly a lot to see.

I remember reading about an early vacuum train line built in my country during the early 1900s (I think, it might even have been *earlier*), which was faster than a normal train and worked well underground without filling the tunnels with smoke from the steam engines of the time, but it was expensive, needing vast amounts of maintenance, and was impossible to work at full capacity due to leather seals failing too often. The design was abandoned for being too complex, and replaced with electric locomotives like most underground lines, which were cheaper, fast enough, required way less maintenance, and were safer and still produced no pollution. *EDIT:* I did some Googling, it was an experiment by Isembard Kingdom Brunel from 1847, inspired by an earlier experiment by someone else from a few years earlier, and while both experiments worked they were never commercially viable and both were replaced by typical rail. 170 years ago, this design didn’t work, and to this day it’s still nowhere near superior to traditional trains.

When I called it a vacuum train on reddit, people sperged out that I didn't call the concept hyperloop. I hate how all it takes is rebranding and a marketing campaign and you can claim an idea as your own despite it having been around for decades.

Something that I'm concerned about in the context of Hyperloop, and at the same time something that I see rarely mentioned by other people, is the huge hazard this method of transportation would pose. You are travelling at a massive speed *in a vacuum.* The cabin needs to be perfectly pressurized. If it fails, passengers are exposed to a practically deadly vacuum. Even high altitude airplanes don't travel in a vacuum - if the interior depressurizes, the only thing you have to worry about is hypoxia - hence oxygen masks drop from the ceiling. What would be the safety measure for such an occurence inside a hyperloop pod? Oxygen mask wouldn't help you much inside a vacuum. And of course, another problem is that the tube around the pod track would *also* need to be pressurized. If its integrity is breached and air leaks inside the track, it would pose a hazard for the pods. A wave of air jumping from 0 to 1 atmosphere would wreak havoc on everything inside. Of course, that's just theory crafting which assumes that the hyperloop is an actual tangible technology and not instead just a silly idea conceived by a billionaire scam artist with the purpose of choking the California High Speed Rail project.

After every debunk Ive heard about the Hyperloop, I just realized something that I haven't seen brought up about Elon’s idea. Not only would you need to store the air on the train, but you'd now be releasing massive quantities of it into a vacuum tube that you are somehow supposed to maintain. So even if you managed to figure out the multitude of issues that have already been brought up over the years, I'm pretty sure the air cushion version would be technically impossible.

I'd just like to correct something : The Aérotrain wasn't scrapped because of maglev tech. In France, the train system is publicly managed by the SNCF, which had just spent a ton of time and resources in the development of the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) aka High Speed Train, which was a regular electric train (which can go up to 570km/h (350mph) but stays at 320 km/h (200mph) in regular trips. (It's limited by the tension of the electric cables suspended over the rails, it's power source) ) The Aérotrain was privately developed, and the management company preferred their own project. In addition to that, the Aérotrain was extremely loud : it was a bus or train-car with a literal jet engine strapped to it. But it's tracks were super basic (a cement inverted T) and are still holding today. So noise and the TGV are the reason it wasn't pursued, not maglev. That was in the 60s, 20 years before the first Maglev project saw the light of day.

Take away the numbers or politics and just remember this: Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!

I wonder if trains are so universal that they are used by all civilizations outside earth as well.

This video aged badly, nowadays Hyperloop is the future. Just jocking, in the meanwhike starship exploded and Musk empire is really close to collapse, also considering that interest rates are skyrocketing

one of the first things every engineer learns: if you want to do something efficient and you have a choise, don't use fluid machines

At 5:50, the Hungarian train Max speed got me

We now know he was never going to build it.

Oh ! In india project got halted so some people filed Right to information ( RTI ) to government and the response came that " project is halted due to immature technology "

If this concept was realistic, NASA and Honeywell would've been all over it.

Elon Musk: *does literally nothing* Some weirdos on the internet: *"GENIUS!"*

Didn't Elon Musk say that Hyperloop wasn't suppost to be actually a thing and just prevent high speed rail from being build?

This reminds me of an old Cold War joke, it goes smth like this: "Early astronauts couldn't use a regular pen to make appointments, the lack of gravity would make these pens burst ink all over... so the americans came up with this super expensive hi-tech pen with a special ink-tank to prevent leaks, whereas the soviets started using a pencil."

Building a long roller-coaster is more effective. And fun.

"Max speed : yes" That made me chuckle...

If you want fast travel, bring back the concord plains with modern engineering to improve safety. If you want better trains, just build more trains and better networks. A dedicated line that doesn't make stops, with onboard wifi and comfortable seats will fulfil most people's needs.

In elementary school I learned that rails actually have small gaps in them. That’s for temperature difference. In the summer volume/length increases and in the winter it decreases. I’m sure galaxy brain Elon Musk has a brilliant solution in mind. But like, Having a vacuum sealed tube stretching over miles upon miles sounds perfect for disasters

I think flying cars are unnecessary, ugly and impractical still many people and scientists are fascinated by the concept and putting lots of money and time in this research. Can you make a video on flying cars

Just a minor correction, Shanghai actually has a S-Bahn like subway that connects the airport to the city. Interestingly, the subway stops at the exact same station the maglev stops at. I want to correct this because the video make sit seem like the maglev is the only way to access the airport even though there is a service that serves the community.

I like the comparison of trains at 6:00, having lived in Hungary i remember once i took a train from Budapest to Balaton. The window was stuck open and it was raining so a large puddle had built up in the carriage, luckily a worker came in and pried it closed with the handle of a hammer after a few minutes of trying. At least it left on time so kudos.

Since you mentioned the function of the Shanghai Maglev: The exact route of the train is already covered by a subway line, so the community is served. In theory, you can use the maglev to skip this whole section of the subway line (for a too high ticket price) but the government could have just build an extra subway line for that instead of that expensive project

"Speed: Yes" That's a good summary of my vacation.

2 years later, and the Hyperloop change into some boring car tunnel that no one can open their car doors inside the tunnel. Of course no fire trucks can also go inside. It's so funny how it changed into something that performs worse than other tunnels.

Any issue, a fucking alien invasion too Adam Something: Build trains - SOLVED !!

Virgin Loop has no chance competing against Chad Railroad.

I lived in Shanghai long enough, and I confirm that yes, maglev is nothing more than a "oh look at me" thing. Let's compare it with a taxi. It costs about the same, but first, it doesn't go very far, so you have to take the "plebian subway" to get there. If you are taking the subway, it's no faster than taxi. Then you run into the problem that it's only 19 miles long, which considering the entire Shanghai is about 50 miles in radius across where the airport is on the tippty edge of the city, that maglev barely goes into the city, it stops short at the pudong distict, which is a long shot from where the people actually live. And also want to know the icing on that shit? The one time I took the maglev, there is a slight drizzle, and the supposed 431 kph of top speed went down to 180 due to safety concerns. At that point, a fucking Toyota corolla can do that kind of speed so what's the point.

Aaand 1 year later, Elon Musk admits to his biographer that the hyperloop was a scam or to get high speed rail canceled. Sigh…

I’m still trying to process how someone thinks it’s possible to build a sealed system 700km+ long, whilst also being able to pressurize and depressurize it within a minute I believe was the figure given. It’s pure sci-fi, while I’ll agree the spaceX project has had some merits, a majority of Musks projects appear to be the grandiose designs of a kindergarten child, with no credence paid to things already tried, tested or busted.

Reading these comments is pretty funny. Seems like a lot of people are convinced that boring holes through the earth can somehow be cheaper than laying railroad tracks.

8:52 There IS an "airport S-Bahn" that also serves the local community - Metro Line 2. In fact this line opened just 4 years prior to the Maglev. The Shanghai maglev wasn't that useless, there's still a decent chunk of "commuter between city center and airport" in a city of 24 million. There's nothing inherently bad about maglev technologies. There are low-speed maglev lines in China that ARE profitable such as Beijing S1 Line and the Changsha maglev.