Another vaporware dream created by Elon Musk finally dies. Hyperloop One, formerly Virgin Hyperloop, is selling off its assets, laying off its remaining workers, and preparing to shut down by the end of the year.
The hyperloop was a concept Elon Musk championed to distract the public from California’s efforts to build a high speed rail network.
High speed rail ran against the idea that fixing the problem with cars required EVs and self driving. So he derailed it.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/21/24011448/hyperloop-one-shut-down-layoff-closing-elon-musk
Musk is piling up a tall amount of failures.....isn't about time to stop buying into anything he comes up with that he demands US dollars to shore up?
@carnage4life at least they could reuse the tunnels to make dedicated railways for high velocity trains.
@carnage4life And he worries about AI destroying human life.
@carnage4life Time travel would have been more exciting. He should have done time travel.
Oh hell...
You mean some more snake oil from the charlatan grifter conman carnival barker "genius" Elonivsky Muskovite has gone the way of the dodo...?!?
Say it ain't so, son!!
@lupus_blackfur @carnage4life I'm shocked. SHOCKED! I am SHOCKED. Shocked I tell ya!
@carnage4life I misread "vaporware" as "vaporwave" at first, and ended up imagining a whole bunch of highly stylized hyperloop-themed artwork.
@carnage4life I think this whole concept shows exactly what Elon's issue is. He can't (or won't) see the problems with his idea's. He lives in some sort of magical world where all outcomes are always as predicted and expected. In theory a hyper-loop works. But keeping thousands of miles of large tunnels vacuum takes a lot of effort. And what if there's a structural failure? These are big problems, I don't believe they even occured to him. Minor details for engineers to fix, he probably thought.
@carnage4life yes. Love to see it. A project designed to make regular people’s lives harder and hurt public transit systems.
This is one example for why public transit needs to be in public control.
Sure, farm out the actual building and possibly operations to private companies. But the control must be in public hands.
A public entity will keep on building (once it's found the funds). A public entity will make sure it runs. A public entity does not pull out randomly. Yes, staid. No, not shiny or sexy. But it will be there, and accountable.
@carnage4life lol at the article's view that Musk came up with the idea.
An atmospheric railway was built in Crystal Palace in 1864. Alfred Beach built another in New York City in 1869, which quickly lost the public interest and was rebuilt into a shooting-gallery until a fire. Ultimately it was integrated into City Hall Station.
Similarly, the first electric cars were the 1890s London Bersey cabs. They had suspension and range problems, too.
Musk is so *so* *very* retro.