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Hyperloop One's Full-Scale Test Track Is Nearly Complete

The company hopes to do the first full-scale hyperloop test in the first half of this year.

After a quiet few months fraught with infighting and scandal, Hyperloop One has revealed its first photos of a hyperloop test track that looks more or less like hyperloop mockups we've been seeing for years.

When I flew out to the Nevada desert for the company's first propulsion test nearly a year ago, the hype surrounding the hyperloop—Elon Musk's "fifth mode of transportation"—was at its peak. The test worked as was expected, however I think people had already let their imaginations run wild, and were underwhelmed by seeing an empty sled move down an unenclosed magnetic rail at speeds nowhere near the promised top hyperloop speeds of about 700 mph.

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In any case, after that initial test, Hyperloop One had a rough few months. Hyperloop cofounder Brogan BamBrogan resigned from the company and then promptly sued it, alleging that Afshin Pishevar, brother of fellow cofounder Shervin Pishevar, was abusive and had at one point placed a noose on his desk. Take this with a grain of salt, but as an outsider who had interviewed BamBrogan, Shervin Pishevar, and CEO Rob Lloyd once and had watched them handle a public unveiling on another occasion, BamBrogan struck me as the man pushing the technology of the hyperloop forward. The company has soldiered on, and now says it'll be ready to do the world's first full-scale hyperloop test in the first half of this year.

Gone is the short-term dream of building one of these between Los Angeles and San Francisco—Hyperloop One says the first commercial hyperloop will be built between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. For the foreseeable future, this test track in Nevada will be the only full-scale hyperloop in the US.