Is Musk's 800mph Hyperloop The Future Of Inter-City Transport?

The man behind Tesla, Elon Musk, has revealed an amazing idea for an 800mph inter-city transport system that could get a car from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes.

The awesomely-named Musk has no plans to make it himself - saying he’s too busy with Tesla Motors and his NASA-rivalling SpaceX programme - despite revealing detailed plans for the Hyperloop to the world yesterday.

Essentially, the Hyperloop involves a system of tubes, raised above the ground on columns. Inside this closed loop, individual six-person pods will ride on a cushion of air like a hovercraft to allow for speeds of around 800mph. Propulsion will come from a combination of air pressure and magnetic fields, with solar power behind most, if not all the power needs.

Forget creature comforts, however. This is all about speed, so you can forget an onboard toilet; but if this system can get you from London to Edinburgh in less time than it takes to chew through a Little Chef steak sandwich, who needs a toilet, right?

According to the plans, the Hyperloop could transport cars as well; with one car per pod like a personal Channel Tunnel. You’d just drive on and the pod would rocket away. Musk says the idea is best suited to sub-1000-mile distances where the Hyperloop offers a time and cost advantage over air travel; not to mention the massive (if theoretical) environmental benefits.

The Hyperloop idea is aimed at destabilising plans for a high-speed train linking cities in California, which Musk says will cost 10 times the maximum that the Hyperloop would. The planned high-speed trains would also be more expensive to travel on than the Hyperloop as well as being slower to arrive at their destinations.

Any problems with the Hyperloop idea? Well, you could argue Musk is about 10 years too late with the idea if he wanted California to take it up. Plans are well advanced to start construction on the new railway within months. But given his impressive record and endorsement from a variety of scientists, the Hyperloop might just be worth a last-minute look.

And as the UK government looks further into the bonkers HS2 high-speed rail link, might that be a second potential market for the Hyperloop? Time will tell, but only if someone else wants to take the idea off the busy Musk's hands.

What are your thoughts of Musk's Hyperloop proposal? Think it'll ever make reality?