While the world talked about Hyperloop travel since plans were announced in 2018 to one day connect Cleveland to Chicago in 28 minutes or Cleveland to Pittsburgh in 19, the renderings have always been from the outside.
Now, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, the group behind the Cleveland project, is giving us the inside look.
“This is the interior that we’re building for the first Hyperloop system, so a version of this is what you’ll be able to ride for the first Hyperloop between Chicago and Cleveland,” said Robert Miller, HyperloopTT’s chief marketing officer.
The capsules of around 30 meters in length use passive magnetics to levitate in essentially a vacuum tube where they can travel smoothly at speeds of up to 700 miles (1,100 km) an hour. “The ride is completely smooth so passengers could drink a cup of coffee,” said Miller.
The capsule is spacious, equipped with interesting artificial sunlight technology, and an artificial skylight where it feels like you’re outside, or gazing at the night sky. It also has speakers embedded in the headrests. It’s personalized, so the seat knows who you are, knows your name if you want it to. It’s also a place where you’re able to pick up on your Netflix show right where you left off at home just flipping open the tablet and by a metric scan.
“The ideal situation is you moving from one place to the next on your living room sofa right. So, we want to recreate all the comforts of home within a Hyperloop,” said Miller.
The big boost to the group’s efforts came in the infrastructure package. While there was no direct funding to this futuristic form of transportation, it has been recently opened to Federal funding and programs that other forms of transportation can already access.
Testing continues at the company’s test track in France and the Cleveland project remains on track, Miller said, to possibly be the first of the Hyperloop projects in the country. The hope is to have Hyperloop in Northeast Ohio by the end of the decade.
