Tech startup demonstrates a lightweight aluminium sled could travel 100mph in just 2 sec

Hyperloop One, a startup founded by tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, is currently working on Hyperloop system- a concept that says trains can be equipped to travel at supersonic speeds up to 800mph (1,300km/h) using reduced pressure tubes. Pressurised capsule pods (the train carriages) ride on an air cushion in steel tubes driven by linear induction motors and air compressors, which allows them to go faster than current trains.

Hyperloop One is pushing ahead with tests on its design, and in May was able to demonstrate that a lightweight aluminium sled could travel 100mph in just 2 seconds on a 1.9-mile-long test track in the Nevada Desert during its first public high speed propulsion test.

"The DNA of my time at SpaceX has got its fingerprints all over Hyperloop. There's nothing new that has to be invented, but (what) we are doing is innovating and doing things to bring the cost down," Hyperloop One's CTO Brogan BamBrogan told tech site Futurism.

"We think we can deliver things people don't even know they want yet, and that's going to manifest itself in a lot of ways. So I think we will see some above-grade systems, we're definitely going to see tunnelled systems, and we also want to see some underwater systems."

The firm currently has one rival competing against it – Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a startup made up of 500 part-time engineers across the US that has licensed a technology called passive magnetic levitation.

The technology involves magnets arranged in a special pattern underneath the train cars to produce a strong electromagnetic field that is repelled from the magnets embedded in the train track to move.