The seemingly impossible dream of arriving in Mexico City from Guadalajara in less time than you spend in line at the bank – and without setting foot in Miguel Hidalgo International Airport – hasn’t yet been realized, but it has crept closer to possible fruition.
Hyperloop One, the company created in 2013 – from an idea dreamed up by Tesla’s Elon Musk – by entrepreneurs Shervin Pishevar and Josh Giegel, has announced the winners of a worldwide competition it staged in May 2016 designed to narrow down from 2,600 entrants to ten the potential recipients of the company’s assistance and financial largess in constructing their own hyperloop. Each participant is a mega region wishing to close the temporal distance between its most densely-peopled metropolitan areas. Guadalajara/Mexico City survived the first round of cuts and is among the ten finalists, which also include four in the United States, two in India, two in the United Kingdom and one in Canada.
The ten winners will now work even more closely with Hyperloop, which will tailor its analysis and advice to the topographical, geographic and demographic peculiarities of each region.
The hyperloop itself consists of a tube through which a passenger pod levitated by magnets is shot at about 1,200 km/h, helping minimize drag to nearly zero.
The Los Angeles-based company’s stated goal is to have three “full-scale” systems up by 2021.
The firm behind the successful Guadalajara/Mexico City bid is architecture and industrial design firm FR-EE, founded by Fernando Romero, son-in-law of Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim.