Hyperloop One创始人发话：我们是唯一一家真正在做超级高铁项目的公司

近日，Hyperloop One在内华达沙漠的测试跑道上获得成功，联合创始人舍尔文·皮谢尔谈起时总爱自比莱特兄弟。初创公司Hyperloop One总部位于洛杉矶。内华达测试中，采用空气动力学原理的XP-1客舱在减压管道内时速接近200英里，几乎达到5月全面测试时速度的三倍。最终目标是接近声速，即时速约700英里，从而实现出行更快速、更清洁也更经济。

目前其测试跑道在美国是第一个，不过超级高铁的创意真正出处是特斯拉兼SpaceX首席执行官埃隆·穆斯克，皮谢尔和另一位联合创始人乔什·吉格尔只是跟随者。2013年，穆斯克在一份白皮书中详细描述了真空环境下利用电磁学原理搭建超快交通系统的想法，但他表示自己太忙没时间亲自去做。此后出现一批超级高铁方面的初创公司，其中皮谢尔和联合创始人乔什·吉格尔走在最前列。

近日《财富》在纽约市跟皮谢尔，一位从旁协助公司发展的投资人，还有首席工程师吉格尔共同探讨公司发展前景，包括“未来几个月”即将进行的下一轮测试。吉格尔表示下次测试主要为了完善超级高铁的气密设计，客舱进入和离开管道时更顺利。他表示这是整个项目的核心，关乎乘客上下车的站台设计。

吉格尔还表示，目前超级高铁速度已能达到声速，只是受到内华达DevLoop测试跑道长度限制。“如果能再长2公里，速度就能达到每小时700英里了，”他表示。目前Hyperloop One只能在500米长的赛道上测试85%的系统。

就在Hyperloop One宣布完成测试几天后，彭博社透露穆斯克打算打造自己的超级高铁，后来穆斯克旗下主要做隧道基础设施的初创公司The Boring Company也确认了，但没什么价值。

在社交媒体Reddit的问答中，皮谢尔和吉格尔没有回答有关最新进展的问题，其他团队成员也守口如瓶。但从回答中能看出Hyperloop One并未打算放慢发展步调。

实际点看，你觉得何时能测试载人超级高铁？

吉格尔：（大笑）可能会比大家料想中快。

皮谢尔：如果完成测试，我们会回来宣布的，这肯定是我们想做的事。只是现在不方便评论。

吉格尔：这次测试时我们在测试机器各部位安装了大概150个传感器，所以我们很清楚乘客乘坐的感受。

如果真的有乘客，打算用多少时速测试？

吉格尔：目前人们还不关心时速，只关心加速情况，所以我们做了一些测试，加速G值在2左右。就是说速度从零到每小时60英里只用1秒多点，就像运动模式吧。

接受CNBC采访时你们说到超级高铁会成为全世界最便宜的交通方式，那么到底是为谁服务呢？

皮谢尔：问得好。我们希望实现的是最便宜、最快捷也最干净的公共交通方式。其经济价值在于迅速将人们送往目的地，而且由于超级高铁不受天气影响，所以也不会出现延误。也就是说人们可以随意选择居住地，可以是费城、华盛顿特区，也可以在纽约市。人们可以充分散开，不用都挤在拥挤的市中心。这样可以节省资源，也能提高生产率和效率。

就像纽约2.75美元坐一次的地铁一样么？还是跟铁路价格差不多？哦，如果光看速度的话估计跟机票价格差不多吧，得几百上千美元？

皮谢尔：具体的价格还没定，但我们的目标是人人都能坐得起，就像西南航空的廉价机票一样。我们想做跨城市交通，所以并非地铁系统的替代。不管距离是100英里还是300英里，我们会把路途拆分成一段一段的距离，最终目的是将路费降到比机票和高速铁路票价便宜。其他方面跟我们提出的理念有关，我们称之为监管套利和邻近补贴。类似的例子是Uber旗下Uber Black和UberX的关系。Uber Black可以补贴低端版本，包括Uber拼车和UberX，让价格更加亲民。现在用Uber拼车的费用跟坐公交车差不多。

吉格尔：如果仔细核算各种交通方式成本会发现，乘客支付的费用差不多都是每公里10美分。坐飞机差不多每公里8美分，具体取决于折扣之类。我们的目标价格标准是10美分左右，跟当前市场价基本持平。

皮谢尔：必须澄清的一点是我们是科技和知识产权公司，所以并不会真正运营各线路，只想为其他公司打造平台。今后我们的技术可能会促进全球各地成立数千家企业。过程可能要花几十年。各线路价格最终会由本地运营商根据当地经济水平制定。

埃隆·穆斯克在Twitter上宣布，已经获得“政府口头批准”建造纽约跟华盛顿特区之间的超级高铁，你们怎么看？你们知道他要宣布这件事么？

吉格尔：当天我在测试场待到凌晨3点半，早上8点接到电话，所以我真不知道他会宣布什么消息（大笑）。

皮谢尔：我们想做的是地面和地下交通解决方案。穆斯克想做的是隧道交通，所以如果你看看他在TED大会上的发言就会发现，他的创意更像有轨电动车。应用场景会有很多差别。我们想做超级高铁，我们定义的超级高铁是指管道中悬浮推进，全真空环境下的空中管道里列车无阻力前进，类似飞机在20万英尺高空飞行。对我们来说这才是超级高铁，我们也是唯一一家真正投身该领域的公司。隧道交通适合长途，但并不一定最经济。但就像我们之前说过的，超级高铁实现起来可能会受很多因素影响，也可能有很多应用方式。

如果穆斯克真的获得批准，你希不希望跟他合作？还是你觉得你们是竞争对手？

皮谢尔：不一定。如果你开了家汽车公司，市场上也有别的汽车公司，你不会因为有竞争对手存在就停止造车。对我们来说世界很大，地球这个星球更是庞大，要搭建基础设施还有很长的路要走。超级高铁也属于公共项目，所以线路营造会出现竞标，但都是很多年以后的事了。真正走下去还需要很多努力。

你们如何确保公司处在领先地位并最终实现盈利？

吉格尔：我刚看完一本超级棒的书，内容是莱特兄弟。他们发明了飞机，但现在并没有莱特兄弟航空公司，好像是因为他们没有继续创新。所以对我们来说，一定要持续创新。这意味着我们要请最优秀的人才，不断打造新产品不断测试，拓展可能的极限，因为优秀的工程师热爱创造新产品，而不是仅仅停留在纸面上。我们有机会在全世界实现梦想。如果我们停滞不前，那么竞争对手确实可能会超越，情况就像20世纪初100家汽车公司混战一样。

皮谢尔：差别在于，市场上只有我们公司在真正努力打造超级高铁，证明其可行性。

对手间的差距总会慢慢缩小的，是吧？

皮谢尔：是的，但竞争是好事。

项目持续进行肯定需要政府的资金。你们如何向本地社区解释竞标政府资金？

皮谢尔：这就变成工作经济学和城市经济学的案例了，我认为今后的挑战更多会因为自动化，一些相关工作岗位都会导致较大的社会和经济压力。所以要更多地发挥技术的作用，更公平地分配经济机会。可以拿现在的底特律当例子，大片土地荒废着，如果能将底特律跟芝加哥之类大城市连接起来，可能就会给底特律带去很多投资机会。

吉格尔：罗马修路，西班牙造船，英国铺铁路……每次都实现GDP大幅增长。通过交通工具将人们联系起来节省时间总会带来新机会。

距2028年洛杉矶奥运会还有11年，到时超级高铁能分担交通压力么？

皮谢尔：说起来，之前我们跟洛杉矶奥组委一些负责人见过，当时还在申办。我们都很激动，也聊起了将大洛杉矶地区的经济影响力积极扩散出去。当然了，奥运会期间交通系统的压力需要想办法缓解。其实选择有两种，一种是将各种赛事活动分散开来，另一种是在城区集中举办。奥运会可以催生很多工作岗位，所以还得到时候看。现在什么都说不定，也什么都可能发生。

为表述简洁，采访内容已经过编辑精简。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

At least that's the comparison co-founder Shervin Pishevar likes to make when talking about the success his Los Angeles-based startup has had on a test track in the Nevada desert. There, the company's aerodynamic XP-1 pod has traveled down a depressurized tube at nearly 200 miles per hour, which is almost triple the speed it hit during its first full-scale test in May. The goal is to get the pod to fly down the line at the speed of sound—roughly 700 miles per hour—and make way for a faster, cleaner, and cheaper way to travel.

The startup's test track is the first operational hyperloop in the United States, though Pishevar and co-founder Josh Giegel crowdsourced the actual idea from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. In 2013, Musk detailed an ultrafast transportation system using electromagnetism in a near-vacuum environment in a white paper that he initially said he was too busy to create himself. A crop of hyperloop startups have since emerged, but Pishevar and co-founder Josh Giegel are at the front of the pack.

Fortune recently caught up with Pishevar, an investor who handles the business side of the company, and chief engineer Giegel in New York City to talk about the company's overall momentum, including the next round of testing set to take place "within the next couple months." Giegel said that the upcoming tests are particularly focused on perfecting the hyperloop's airlock design in order to get pods effectively in and out of the tube. That will be essential, he said, if and when stations are designed to board passengers.

Giegel also claimed that the system is already capable of traveling at supersonic speeds — it's merely restricted by the length of their DevLoop test track in Nevada. "If we were to build out another two kilometers, then we could get up to 700 miles per hour," he said. For now, Hyperloop One's engineers are determined to test 85% of the system on the 500 meters of track they already have.

It's worth nothing that a few days after Hyperloop One announced the news of their second test, Bloomberg revealed Musk's intentions to build his own hyperloop, which The Boring Company — one of Musk's startups focused on tunneling infrastructure — later confirmed.

Pishever and Giegel have not answered questions about this development, nor did any of their team members during a recent Reddit AMA. But the company's answers do indicate that Hyperloop One doesn't have plans to slow down.

When do you realistically expect to be able to test a human being in a pod?

JG: [laughs] Probably sooner than everybody thinks.

SP: We’ll come back to announcements about that, it’s obviously something we definitely want to do. We can’t comment right now.

JG: On this particular test we had something like 150 sensors all over the vehicle, so we know very well what the rider experience would be like inside of the pod.

Do you have any idea what speed you’d want to test with humans inside?

JG: Right now, humans don’t care about speed. They care about the acceleration, so we’ve done a couple different tests where we accelerate around 2 Gs. That’s like zero to 60 in a little over a second, so sport mode.

On CNBC you said that the hyperloop would be the cheapest transportation in the world. Who is that cheap for, exactly?

SP: That’s a great question. What we’re trying to accomplish is the cheapest, fastest, cleanest form of major public transportation. There's economic value in being able to move people and things fast – and without any delays because the hyperloop is impervious to weather. You can live and work anywhere, whether it's in Philly, D.C., New York City. You’ll be able to spread across regions versus being highly-localized into urban centers. It adds up to savings, productivity, and efficiency.

Is this something that costs $2.75 like the subway here in New York? Are they Amtrak-like prices? Or, given similar speeds, are they more like an airline prices in the hundreds or thousands of dollars?

SP: The actual prices are to be decided, but the goal is to get it to be something that’s affordable, more like a Southwest Airlines ticket. You want to be able to move people and things between cities in a way that turns those cities into metro stops, so it’s not a replacement for subway systems. So whether it’s a 100-mile or 300-mile distance, collapsing that into a shorter distance and making it cheaper than airlines and high-speed Amtrak trains is definitely an area we want to go. The other thing has to do with concepts we’ve coined, called regulatory arbitrage and adjacent subsidization. An example of that would be Uber Black and UberX. Uber Black subsidizes the cheaper version — whether it's Uber Pool or UberX — and allows it to be more affordable for people. At the point when you're getting to Uber Pool prices, you're around the price of a bus ticket in the city.

JG: If you look at those modes of transportation, they all come out to be about 10 cents a kilometer — which is what the passenger pays for. On airplanes you might pay eight cents a kilometer, depending on how that goes. But our system target is that 10 cents range because that’s currently what the market is paying.

SP: One thing that is important to clarify is that we are a technology and intellectual property company, so we don’t really want to operate these lines — we want be a platform for other companies. So this should be thousands of companies around the world that get built on top of our technology. This is a multi-decade effort. The pricing is going to be determined by the local economic realities of each of those operators.

What did you think about Elon Musk’s announcement on Twitter saying that he had “verbal government approval" to build a hyperloop between New York and D.C.? Did you have any idea he was going to say anything like that?

JG: I was at a test site until 3:30 a.m. and I got a call at 8 a.m., so I didn’t know he was going to say anything [laughs].

SP: We’re very focused on building overground and underground solutions. What he was talking about was tunneling, so if you look at that and you look at the video from the TED talk, it's very much centered on electric cars on sleds. There’s going to be many different applications. We’re very focused on building the hyperloop. And the hyperloop is exactly something we’ve described as an actual tube with levitation propulsion and a vacuum that essentially vents around sky inside the tube flying at 200,000 feet. That to us is the hyperloop, and we’re the only company building that. Tunneling is for long distances, not necessarily the most economically feasible solution. But like we said, there’s going to be many different form factors and applications of it.

If he did get that approval, would that be something that you would expect or hope to work with him on? Or do you see yourself as competitors?

SP: Not necessarily. If there’s a car company, and you have another car company, you don’t stop building your car and company because there are others. For us, the world’s a very big place, the planet’s very big, and infrastructure takes a long time. These are also public projects, so there will be a bidding process for these routes, all of which are still years away. It’s going to take an incredible effort.

How do you ensure your company stands out and is ultimately profitable?

JG: I just finished a super fascinating book on the Wright Brothers. They're the guys that first did it, but we don’t fly on Wright Brothers airlines. It seems like they kind of just stopped innovating. So for us, we have to continue to innovate. That means we get the best people, we push the boundaries by actually building and testing because good engineers like to build things—they don’t want do it on paper. We also need real world projects, whether it be Dubai or in Europe or the U.S. These give us an opportunity to go and deploy this throughout the world. If we stagnate in terms of what we’re developing, then yeah, those competitors are going to pass us by. There was something like 100 car companies at the turn of the 20th century.

SP: And the difference is, we’re the only company that’s actually building it and proving that it works.

Surely that gap will close at some point, though, right?

SP: Yeah. But competition is a good thing.

This project is almost certainly going to need government money. What do you say to local communities you are competing with for funding?

SP: This is a case study in the economics of work and the economics of cities, and I think we’re moving into an era where the challenges that are going to happen because of automation — the types of jobs that are going to be available — is going to create a lot of societal and economic pressures. You have to be able to bring technology to the forefront and allow economic opportunity to be more equally spread. If you look at Detroit right now as an example, there are vast swaths of Detroit that have been abandoned. If you were able to connect Detroit to places like Chicago, you could potentially bring a lot more economic opportunity investment to it.

JP: Roman roads, Spanish ships, English trains — the whole thing — allowed GDP to shoot through the roof, and by connecting people in that way and by saving time it just continues to allow people new opportunities.

The Olympics are in Los Angeles, 11 years from now. Could hyperloop help the transportation out in any capacity?

SP: Well, early on we met with some of the leaders of the Olympic Committee in L.A. while they were bidding for it. We were incredibly excited, again to the point we were talking about being able to spread the economic impact in a positive way to a wider region of greater Los Angeles. Also, the strains on the transportation systems that are going to happen need to be relieved. But you could have an Olympics that could potentially spread those activities and events to a wider area versus localizing them into downtown areas. And that could create a lot of jobs, so we’ll see. There’s nothing concrete, but you never know.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.