All You Need To Know About Virgin’s Mumbai-Pune Hyperloop Project

Hyperloop is one technology the entire world is looking forward to. From the makers to the spectators, everyone’s is just too excited about this from-future technology that can cut short on an enormous amount of travel time between two cities. However, not many are super-enthusiastic about it, since it still isn’t considered to be realistic or worth the price, thrown into it.

What’s a Hyperloop? It’s a revolutionary train service that envisions loading passengers and cargo into a pod that will accelerate gradually via electric propulsion through a low-pressure tube.

Moving past over all of this is the new Mumbai-Pune Hyperloop project that can just change the world, or at least Maharashtra for a starter.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop One has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Maharashtra Government to build a hyperloop transportation system between Mumbai and Pune to bring travel time to just 25 minutes. The current travel time is around three hours. The MoU announcement was made during the Magnetic Maharashtra investor summit.

“Virgin Hyperloop One can help India become a global transportation pioneer and forge a new world-changing industry. The Pune-Mumbai route is an ideal first corridor as part of a national hyperloop network that will dramatically reduce travel times between most of India’s major cities to under two hours,” Virgin Hyperloop One Chairman stated in a press release, as reported by The Indian Express.

However, not all about the project has been announced yet. Details like the total cost of the project and an exact timeline of its launch will still take some time before coming out in the open. As per The Hindu Business Line, Mumbai-Pune Hyperloop project will take at least three years to complete the test run and six-years to actually kick start.

This particular MoU for Hyperloop is not the first one in the country. Last year, Andhra Pradesh government signed a MoU with the US-based Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HIT), in order to connect Vijayawada and Amravati. While currently, the time between the two cities stands at one-hour, it will come to mere six minutes with a Hyperloop.

The entire concept of Hyperloop was first proposed by none other than Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla. However, he is no longer directly involved with the development of this technology since it’s still a far-fetched idea.

Many even consider the concept of Hyperloop to be flawed since it looks so good on papers, yet haven’t still been tested with actual humans on board.

However, in the end, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh government have decided to bring this technology to the people of their states and provide an ease of transportation to them. According to some points shared by Richard Branson, this system will connect 26 million people and support 150 million passenger trips per year. This Mumbai-Pune Hyperloop project could also result in $55 billion (Rs 350,000 crore) in “socio-economic benefits, time savings, accident reduction and operational cost savings, over 30 years of operation,” claims the billionaire.

Jyotsna Amla