“We have got to a point where we can probably demonstrate the full Hyperloop stack including a vacuum tube at about 400-meter length in our new campus,” he said, referring to the demo that Avishkar Hyperloop will give at the ‘Global Hyperloop Competition’, which IIT-Madras will host next January.
Conceived by Elon Musk in 2013, the Hyperloop is a low-pressure tube in which magnetically-levitated pod-like vehicles can use to ferry cargo and passengers, sometimes at speeds in excess of 1,000 kmph.
While Musk’s companies did not commercialize the technology, two firms had picked up the guantlet–Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc. (HyperloopTT) and Hyperloop One.
Hyperloop Italia, a licensee of HyperloopTT, is currently exploring the feasibility of a hyperloop operating prototype named ‘Hyper Transfer’ to carry cargo and passengers, which it hopes will lead to the construction of the world’s first commercial hyperloop system in Italy. It’s doing so in partnership with two Italian companies–WeBuild and Leonardo.
Hypeloop One was not as lucky. The startup received a major setback when Virgin founder Richard Branson pulled out two years back, following which Hyperloop One shut down operations in December 2023.
Consequently, when Branson’s plans to develop the Pune-Mumbai, Bengaluru city-Kempegowda airport, and Amritsar-Chandigarh hyperloop corridors in partnership with Dubai-based logistics company DP World, were shelved, it added to the disillusionment.
But Chakravarthy, who is a faculty advisor to the IIT Madras student team at Avishkar Hyperloop, remains optimistic. He underscores that the Avishkar Hyperloop 70-odd revolving student team has been developing “the full Hyperloop stack of contactless propulsion, contactless braking with linear induction motor and levitation and a vacuum tube, and so on, since 2017”.
India’s ministry of railways is a key partner in this Hyperloop technology development initiative at IIT Madras. Other research institutions including Hyperloop IITB, the official hyperloop team of IIT Bombay; the student hyperloop from IIT Delhi; and Team Vegapod Hyperloop, a student-led research team from MIT World Peace University, have been consistently participating in global hyperloop competitions and are pitching in with their pilots.
TuTr Hyperloop
IIT-Madras-incubated TuTr Hyperloop, on its part, will work on “commercializing these developments–it can earn revenue from cargo (by providing services to ports, mining industries, and logistics service providers) and eventually from passengers”, according to Chakaravarthy, who is an advisor to the startup.
He insists that TuTr Hyperloop is making steady progress. For instance, it has partnered with IIT-Madras to develop Intellectual Property (IP) in hyperloop technology.
In December 2022, the startup signed an agreement with Tata Steel to jointly work on development and deployment of the Hyperloop technology, and leverage Tata Steel’s expertise in design and development of steel and composite materials.
This January, ArcelorMittal said it is working with Avishkar Hyperloop and TuTr Hyperloop to provide 400 tonnes of steel for the fabrication of the 400-metre vacuum tube, as well as engineering, design and project management expertise to support the creation of India’s and Asia’s first Hyperloop test track at IIT Madras’ 163-acre Discovery Campus at Thaiyur on the outskirts of Chennai. The autonomous, levitating pods will be tested at speeds of up to 200 kilometres per hour in the vacuum tube.
In March, Swiss transportation technology company Swisspod signed a deal with TuTr Hyperloop to help design and fund a testing centre in India that will serve as a hub for testing and refining hyperloop technology in real-world conditions. TuTr Hyperloop also has a partnership with Hardt Hyperloop, a top European hyperloop technology firm, to achieve interoperable hyperloop technology between Europe and India.
Quintrans Hyperloop
Pune-based Quintrans Hyperloop, co-founded by Pranay Luniya and Kartik Kulkarni in 2021, too is currently developing a “couple of pilots, and the plan is to develop these technologies in India itself to make it as cost-effective as possible”.
“I think we are just getting started,” says Lunia, whose startup is “currently working on a pilot on a small 15-meter setup in Pune. The idea is to prove magnetic levitation as well as linear motor propulsion. We are working to levitate roughly around 1 tonne in terms of payload. If we are able to do that, we will be the first private company in India to levitate any sort of payload”.
Once that goal has been achieved, Quintras plans to develop a 100-meter full-scale pilot setup along with the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) in Pune.
Lunia underscores that while many focus on speed as one of the advantages of a hyperloop, “a lot of people miss the fact that a Hyperloop has tubes on which one could lay solar panels (since most of the corridors would be elevated rather than underground). Basically, you could power the Hyperloop with a renewable energy source, which is extremely important given the rising amount of carbon emissions and the government’s targeting for net zero”.
Why Hyperloop projects are taking long to commercialize
First, according to Chakravarthy, the technology is in its nascent stage around the world, and “newer and better solutions” consistently crop up.
“For example, I could use a linear synchronous motor instead of a linear induction motor. And I could place it on the track instead of putting it on the board, and I could use electrodynamic suspension instead of electrostatic suspension. I could use a concrete tube instead of a mild steel tube. Further, I can levitate from the top or I could levitate from the bottom. Hence, there are many different technology choices to put the full stack together and it is not very clear which is actually going to be the most cheapest,” he explains.
Second, technology proof-of-concepts are not robust. For instance, the Technical University of Munich (TUM) Hyperloop, for instance, conducted the first passenger ride under vacuum conditions on July 10, 2023 at TUM’s Ottobrunn/Taufkirchen campus near Munich. But, then, it was only a 24-meter-long test tube.
As Chakravarthy points out, if a company like TuTr Hyperloop works on a “commercial scale where passengers can sit and ride, they will have to ensure that the technology stack that they are developing is the most affordable” The reason: “If you make a wrong choice of technology, you are going to pay the price for a fairly long time–it is like a sunk cost that will have to last for the next 10-15 years.”
Third, according to Chakravarthy, it’s very difficult to raise money for an unproven technology like Hyperloop. “Investors will ask: where is the concept, and who is going to be the customer, among other things?”
Qunitras, too, is getting “funding right now from multiple government schemes, government grants and schemes”. Lunia concurs with Chakravarthy that raising money from venture capitalists (VCs) in India is very difficult since “for Indian VCs, this is kind of a high-risk, high-appetite stuff. Hence, we have been trying to focus on some sovereign funds”.
Fourth, global standards are lacking for this technology. “It requires multiple different standards to come together. For example, the track standards could be metro standards. The tunnel standards could also be metro tunnel standards. The lane switching could be railway standards. But the cabin and the pod could actually have automotive standards. The cabin could have airplane standards. The vestibules could have space standards, and so on,” says Chakravarthy.
Global companies
To be sure, global hyperloop companies including Hardt, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Nevomo, TransPod, Swisspod Technologies, and Zeleros came together to form The Hyperloop Association.
Based in Brussels, the association hopes to work with bodies including the European Commission, the European Parliament, Europe`s Rail Joint Undertaking, research centers, and academia “to advance the progress and facilitate the widespread implementation of the innovative transportation system across Europe and globally”.
Canada-based TransPod, which is developing the FluxJet hyperloop, led the process of writing EU standards for “reference architecture” of vacuum transportation. Chakravarthy, though, insists that “developing the designs is one part of the story; developing the prototypes is the second part of the story. But doing a huge amount of testing is where the proof of the pudding exists”.
Chakravarthy, meanwhile, hopes that the Global Hyperloop Conference that IIT-Madras will host in January, will boost the fortunes of Hyperloop technology. “The prospect looks extremely bright, particularly for what we are doing in India. People coming from around the world are astonished at the level of progress we have made and the level of maturity that we have attained. All this gives us a lot of confidence that in about a 10-year time frame, we should actually have Hyperloop tracks running–at least in some parts of the country.”
“If I were to be modest, I would say we are one year behind the world. Else, we are on par with the Hyperloop developments across the globe,” says Chakravarthy. Hyperloop, he concludes, can allow India to “leapfrog past the high-speed rail story that the Western countries as well as China have gone through in the recent past. It’s like directly jumping onto the smartphone. We can lead the world, we can show by example.”