US company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is in talks with a Russian private investor to finance its launch in Russia, the company’s COO Bibop Gresta told RT last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It is likely the government will also be keen on the idea, he believes.
“We’re heading at a private-public partnership. Usually that’s our model: we involve a private investor and then we ask the state to basically be involved. But it’s a profitable business, for the first time we have a system that is actually able to produce money, so it’s not on the shoulder of all the citizens,” RT quoted Gresta as saying.
The COO believes thatRussia is “a perfect country to have a Hyperloop” due to its vast territory and high population. Travellers in the world’s largest country may save considerable amounts of time with the system, which would “drive Russia into the new Renaissance,” Gresta said.
Moreover, Hyperloop claims to cost “10 times less than any other” means of transportation.
Currently Russia’s fastest train, Sapsan, takes passengers from Moscow to Saint Petersburg — a 650-km-long route — in nearly four hours. But with the Hyperloop sonic speed train, a passenger would be able to rocket between the two Russian cities in just 35 minutes, notes Sputnik.
The first full-scale travel system is currently being built in California, and will be ready to be launched around 2019, Gresta told RT.
Located in Playa Vista, California, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies was founded in 2013, “very shortly after Elon Musk offered the idea up for grabs.” Russia is not the only market targeted by the company: “Outside of the US, we’ve also had interest in Europe and several Asian locations, as well as the Middle East,” Hyperloop’s press service told East-West Digital News.
Last year Russian oligarch Ziyavudin Magomedov invested an undisclosed amount in Hyperloop Technologies, another company operating in the same field.
