Virgin Hyperloop One has inked an agreement with the Maharashtra government to build Mumbai-Pune hyperloop corridor
India’s growing transportation needs could be addressed through innovations in electric mobility across categories such as cars, flying vehicles and hyperloop, said speakers at the Global Business Summit in New Delhi.
Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, however, noted that any technological innovation in the transportation sector in a populous country like India has to be both high-volume and low-cost, ET reported.
Underscoring India’s rapidly growing population and expanding cities, Nilekani said that the country needs high-volume, low-cost options across categories such as ride-sharing, self-driving vehicles, electric cars and mass transit.
Participating in a discussion on ‘Driving Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Radical Transformation’, Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard pitched for electric vehicles as a means to address vehicular pollution. “… Electric cars worked a lot better than the other ones in terms of the energy consumed to move a vehicle per mile,” Eberhard stated.
Another participant, Kitty Hawk Corporation CEO Sebastian Thrun said that his company is developing flying vehicles to address the problems of congestion in urban centres. He said that prototypes of his vehicles — which can fly at 150 miles per hour — are being tested, but the company may take some more years to launch it. According to him, the vehicle looks like an over-sized drone and uses an electric propulsion system and is easy to operate.
Mumbai-Pune hyperloop corridor
Virgin Hyperloop One global CEO Jay Walder, who also participated in the discussion, said that his company has inked an agreement with the Maharashtra government to build a hyperloop that would reduce the travel time between Mumbai and Pune to around 30 minutes from more than three hours now. They are planning to start the construction work by the end of this year.
“This (hyperloop) is a mass transportation system which will change the way we connect cities… It is ideal for distances up to 750 km,” Walder said.
The company is estimating a business case of 150 million rides per year once the corridor is operational.
