Race for Hyperloop Gets More Crowded as Startup Takes on Musk

(Bloomberg) -- A Canadian startup is the latest contender in the race to build a super-fast transportation system to rival futuristic projects backed by Elon Musk and British tycoon Richard Branson.

TransPod wants to raise $50 million for its own version of hyperloop technology, designed to ferry passengers at speeds of more than 1,000 kilometers (622 miles) an hour. The Toronto-based company is planning to build a half-size prototype near Limoges in central France by next year that's better than a concept put forth by Musk, according to Chief Executive Officer Sebastien Gendron.

The tube-based transport technology known as hyperloop is gaining traction after Musk first theorized it in 2013. It has since sprouted a number of competing versions aimed at linking cities at far faster speeds than existing bullet trains in Europe, Japan and China. Branson-backed Virgin Hyperloop One is testing in Nevada, while a California-based company called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies also plans to build a test track in southern France. Musk's SpaceX is organizing hyperloop design competitions after building a one-mile long system near its California headquarters.

“Musk's concept is brilliant, but it's filled with errors,” said TransPod's Gendron in an interview in Paris. “We have a more modest, but also cheaper and regulation-oriented approach.”

The company's patented technology will use magnetic propulsion and electrified tracks to move pods through a 2-mile-long vacuum tunnel designed to reduce friction. The pods would resemble airplanes without wings. Musk's idea was different. Five years ago, he had planned to transport pods on air bearings, a method used by industry to move heavy objects.

TransPod's system would be cheaper than Musk's version, said Gendron, who previously worked for Airbus SE and Bombardier Inc. Costs would be contained by using existing technology for plane fuselage and pressurized cabins and could work out to about 20 million euros ($25 million) per kilometer, or a third cheaper than a high-speed train to connect Paris to Frankfurt, he said.

The Limoges test track will be designed to allow pods to run as fast as 600 kilometers an hour, which is more than France's fast TGV train, but slower than the ultimate goal of more than 1,000 kilometers an hour. Airplanes cruise at around 850 kilometers an hour. TransPod is scouting around for sites including near Orleans in France and Calgary, Alberta to build a full-size model by 2021.

“We're going to disrupt everything,” Gendron said, predicting the company's hyperloop would lead to a transformation in the transport sector that would affect airplane manufacturers as well as train operators like Siemens AG and Alstom SA. “Our approach will outlast the competition. We're in it for the marathon.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Ania Nussbaum in Paris at anussbaum5@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tara Patel at tpatel2@bloomberg.net, Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net.

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