L.A. To San Francisco In 35 Minutes Just Got A Little Closer To Reality

The Hyperloop train is every West Coaster’s best dream. The pods will apparently travel between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 35 minutes, according to its original visionary Elon Musk. A Tuesday article in the MIT Technology Review pulled back the curtain on the first public tests of a Hyperloop, conducted north of Las Vegas on an open-air track. “The thing about Hyperloop is that it does not exist until it actually exists,” Josh Giegel, vice president of design and analysis at Hyperloop One, tells the Technology Review. Well, yes. But the Hyperloop is built on a dream. A dream of trains dropping off passengers between the two cities every two minutes, with trains departing every 28. It sounds like science fiction. Here it is in action. The train hit 2.4 gs accelerating and used a sandpit for breaking. It’s incredible.

The company that conducted the test, Hyperloop One, founded by early Uber investor Shervin Pishevar and former SpaceX engineer Brogan BamBrogan has raised $100 million after a Series B round added $80 million to make the dream a reality, according to FastCompany. True to form in Silicon Valley lore, the company was started in a garage.

Here’s a concept video of the test, in case you can’t get enough.