Sir Richard thank you so much for joining us, it’s great to be talking to you.
It’s very good to be talking to you too, especially today after a historic day yesterday.
It’s a concept that promised to revolutionise our world: put passengers in a pod and transport them
through a sealed tube at extreme speed using electric propulsion and magnetic levitation.
With the prospect of transforming how we travel; billionaires, research teams and governments have
been racing to advance the technology and open the first operational system,
in the face of growing scepticism. But Virgin Hyperloop has just made a
massive break-through - with the first ever passenger test, deep in the Nevada Desert.
What Virgin Hyperloop Founder Josh Giegel and Head of Passenger Experience Sara Luchian have just put
themselves through, could end-up being historic. They’re the first people to ever climb
into a hyperloop pod and travel through the pressurised environment at 107 miles an hour.
The test is a huge step in the technology’s advancement, but whether or not this moment
ends up being taught in schools alongside the first flight, all hinges on what happens next.
Since it was conceived, the world-changing promise of hyperloop has sobered into the
long journey of making the first system viable. That’s taken some extreme, never-before seen
engineering, complex regulatory negotiations with national governments and a lot of
money - from some of the world’s richest people. In his first interview after the passenger test,
Sir Richard Branson spoke to me from Necker Island about the world of hyperloop.
When you first heard about the Hyperloop concept, when it was first described to you,
what did you think? I'd heard about the Hyperloop
idea from somebody called Will Whitehorn, who had worked for Virgin Galactic and worked with
me for years, and his grandfather had actually patented the Hyperloop system back in the,
I think, 1930’s. So, it was an idea that had been conceived, but it had then laid dormant.
And we had a wonderful engineer called Josh Giegel who worked for Virgin Galactic,
and sadly, he decided to leave. I asked him why he decided to leave and he explained that he
wanted to build a Hyperloop system. So, I then went to Las Vegas to talk to him further about
it, and he'd already started constructing a giant tube in the desert outside Las Vegas.
I was ridiculously excited about it and I could see so many potentials with it. And we said, you
know, we'd love this to be another Virgin project and put a bit of money in. And, you know, they've
now been beavering away for a number of years and yesterday was a very important milestone.
Hyperloop is the kind of crazy, bold and daring leap that only someone like Richard
Branson could make happen. The prize is huge, but getting there will take guts,
left-field thinking and no shortage of money.
Branson’s investment into what was then Hyperloop One in 2017 has seen the firm go on to lead the
pack in hyperloop system development worldwide. While Hyperloop Transportation Technologies,
Hardt Hyperloop and others are all making major strides, it’s Virgin that’s made the
most headway; brokering regulatory frameworks with governments, commissioning certification centres,
building the first test tracks and putting real people into pods.
This week’s test in Nevada became viable because of all that progress.
With a pressurised vehicle developed, life support systems in place and countless live
test runs already undertaken on the 500-metre track, the trial could go ahead with confidence.
That was so good. That was awesome.
What did the first test ride feel like? It was surreal, I mean, to build a company that
built an amazing product, that did something that nobody has ever done before, that got two people
on a pod, did it safely, it was amazing before I even went down the tube. And then once it was on,
it was smooth acceleration, very quiet, I barely noticed any type of bumps at all,
it was so smooth, and then we came to a stop, and I think the only disappointment was that it ended.
When you got in, when you climbed in and put those straps on, what was
going through your mind? Were you nervous? I wasn't nervous. It was just kind of the
journey to get here and building a company that ultimately did this and, you know, finding people
like Bjarke, like Richard to support us in that journey, to actually believe in what we're doing
and help us transform a technology company in to something that people are excited about,
something that could be part of people's view of what the future of transportation could be like.
While the success of this trial doesn’t start an entirely new chapter in hyperloop’s journey
to becoming operational, it does inject new confidence and credibility into the process - not
to mention giving its engineers a morale boost. There will now be further tests in Nevada while
the Virgin team continue their work on regulatory approval and certification for the first system.
Progress has been made on regulation with the US Department of Transportation and
the firm has committed to building its base for certifying all Virgin Hyperloop systems worldwide
in West Virginia, a move it hopes will boost the state’s economy and jobs market.
India and Saudi Arabia are also both in talks with Virgin to build the first system, drawn
by the chance to dramatically cut journey times between major cities and boost economic growth.
Of course, going from a test track to a live route between cities is a huge task
and work is going on to mature every aspect of the system, not least its passenger pod.
Those seats you see in the test, will look pretty different in the first system, all with the help
of one of the world's most famous architects. Where on earth do you begin with designing
pods and stations for a transportation system that doesn't even exist yet?
In Danish the word for design is ‘formgivning’, which means ‘form giving’,
to give form to that which has not yet been given form. And I think that becomes especially true
in the case of working with giving form to the Hyperloop and the Hyperpod in Project Pegasus,
where we are essentially giving form to something that the world has not yet seen and in a sense
try to capture, because of course, if you make it look like a train or like a very fast train,
that's what people will see. And I think in many ways we were trying to create something that feels
inviting and attractive and to a certain extent familiar, but not sort of limited
to a different version of something existing, like really try to provide this kind of feeling of
stepping into the future. And also like, how do you express something that is, it has to look
extremely fast because it is, but also it travels through a near vacuum so in that sense, it doesn't
have the same aerodynamic requirements as you would normally encounter. But essentially you
end up, it's kind of an incredible opportunity, to show to the world something for the first time
and, you know, first impressions last so in that sense, I really hope when people see the
Pegasus pod, that they kind of get a sense of something new and exciting around the corner.
Despite the excitement, hyperloop has encountered growing scepticism
over recent years - particularly as the early rhetoric has met reality.
Those working on the system say they acknowledge this inevitable sway in opinion
and are working to advance the technology,
addressing many of the concerns that instinctively jump to most of our minds.
I wanted to ask Sir Richard about this. As one of the world’s most famously optimistic billionaires,
what does he make of the naysayers and how does he distinguish between a genius idea and fantasy?
What do you say to the naysayers, the people out there that say,
look, this is all just a bit of a far-fetched fantasy, it’s never going to go anywhere?
They should go and talk to somebody called Paul Griffiths, who runs Dubai Airport. What he
is planning to do is to build another airport the other side of Dubai. His dream is then to have
Hyperloop run between the two airports, but the individual pods to go to individual gates. So, the
pod will break off for Los Angeles and a pod will break off for New York, a pod will break off for
Miami or Tokyo. And the passengers will get out at their gate and be able to get straight on to
the plane. By doing it from airport to airport they won't have to worry about passports or
security or anything like that because they would have already been checked.
And from his point of view, because the two airports are quite a long way apart, you know,
this means that these two airports effectively become one airport. One other example is Mumbai
and Pune, which is a five-and-a-half-hour journey by road, the busiest route in India,
so you can imagine how busy it is. Littered with car accidents every day. Long, long traffic jams.
And the idea is just to run Hyperloop along the side of the motorway. And there will be a lot of
people sitting in cars who are going to be very, very jealous when they see the pods whisking by.
I know you're trying to get the first system operational by 2030, but I'm interested,
where do you see Hyperloop in 20 years’ time? So, 10 years after that first system,
how do you see it impacting the world? It depends how much governments get behind
it. I mean, the American government have got right behind it and they're now going through the
whole certification process with us. We've got a state in America that, you know, given us land to
set up the test centres there. The British government are excited to explore
ideas with us. And so, I think I mean, yesterday was important. There's still a lot of work to do,
but it was a giant step in the right direction and sort of brought the project alive. Rather
than it just being pods shooting down at a tunnel, suddenly it was a pod with people.
And one of the nice things about watching it was it didn't look like they'd moved, suddenly
they had just gone from A to B, but it wasn't until their expressions of joy,
when they got to the far end, broke out that one realized that it had achieved its purpose.
It's a Virgin company again, that's done something historic and ground-breaking.
Do you ever get tired of that feeling, of just seeing this cool stuff happen?
Never really. I mean, I love, ever since I started
55 years ago when I was 15, you know, I'd love creating things and love creating things
that are going to make a difference. Sometimes we fall flat on our face and sometimes we succeed.
You know, it's extremely exciting trying to break boundaries and push things forward.
Of course, only time can reveal if hyperloop was a great idea and whether or not the test
that’s just happened in Nevada will be reflected on as a quantum leap for human transportation.
Until then, we can only watch as hyperloop teams around the world move forward on their bold and
daring journeys - pushing the very limits of engineering in their bid to transform our world.
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