20 July, 2017
The Hyperloop system would travel in a tunnel dug by Elon Musk's new Boring Company, and Musk claims that it would do DC to NY in 29 minutes.
CEO Elon Musk took to his Twitter (TWTR) account Thursday morning to announce his company has received verbal government approval to build an underground Hyeperloop. "NY-DC in 29 mins", the billionaire inventor and entrepreneur tweeted Thursday afternoon.
He said his hyperloop would have city center to city center service, with perhaps a dozen or more entry and exit elevators in each city. It now takes around four hours to drive the 226 miles between the two cities, while train travel takes around three hours.
Hyperloop One co-founder Shervin Pishevar said, "Hyperloop One has accomplished what no one has done before by successfully testing the first full-scale Hyperloop system".
On an average day, a auto ride from New York City to Washington D.C. takes just more than four hours and about 3 hours by train.
What verbal approval from the government means is also not clear. But it may have just taken a significant step closer to reality, according to a tweet from Musk.
Musk has generally spoken of the Boring Company as a back-burner pursuit compared with SpaceX and Tesla.
At the International Space Station Research & Development Conference in D.C. on Wednesday, Musk said another one of his plans, to dig tunnels under Los Angeles, is a "low stress activity" because "everyone expects it to fail".
A photo of The Boring Company's tunneling machine.
