Bankrupt - Hyperloop One

one claims it's the company's only chance for [Music] survival Atari has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a 31y old Ewa presents the difference Kodak is filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy [Music] protection what's up guys my name is Jake and welcome to the 24th Episode of bankrupt for years now there has been a proposed cuttingedge mode of transportation promising unfathomable travel times between major cities the idea spawned from Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk made headlines around the world and created a whole Market of companies working to make it a reality the largest of which was known as hyperloop 1 a startup which seemed to have been making the most progress and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in investment but after just a decade of operations and following partnership with Virgin the company declared what is the equivalent of bankruptcy by the end of 2023 so today let's take a look at a company formed out of massive hype and one that at one point was worth around $700 million this is Virgin hyperloop 1 the concept for the hyperloop really began all the way back in the early 20th century with engineer Robert H Godard and his idea called a v train a mode of transportation that would utilize a pressurized tube with low air density to travel at a high rate of speed but even his idea was based on the concepts that have been developed and tested to a lesser extent through the mid to late 1800s through the decades later though the VAC train and pneumatic tubes in general were disgusting concepts for the future proposals would pop up through the years notably in the 9s and early 2000s their large scale feasibility however was just a concept reduced only to science fiction but that was until 2012 when Elon Musk was on a humanitarian trip to Cuba he told his friend and fellow Silicon Valley entrepreneur shervin pev about his idea for a modern take on the V train idea with encouragement from shervin Elon Musk would go on to publish his idea and leave it open source as he claimed that he didn't have enough time to work on it between running Tesla and SpaceX Elon published the idea in August of 2013 calling it hyperloop Alpha in the white papers he released it included a rough outline of what such an idea could entail along with some preliminary sketches done by engineers at SpaceX and Tesla the concept was a modern take on the past research and Concepts over the decades basically taking a pod putting it in a large tube pressurizing it so that there is very little air resistance and accelerating it to very fast speeds around 760 mph the idea would be to construct these tubes between major cities that are close enough for flying to be impractical yet driving to be too long think of the distance between Los Angeles in San Francisco driving would take over 5 hours while flying would take a little over an hour and a half plus all the headaches that come with these now hyperloop would cut down the time to just 35 minutes and of course there are plenty of cases like this not only in the US but all over the world the best part though is that this fifth mode of transportation as Elon dubbed it would emit no direct carbon emissions this was an intriguing concept and one that captured a lot of media attention again mus claimed that he was just too busy to take on the enormous development task and instead began hosting competitions inviting private companies and engineers divisions of universities to come up with their own take on the idea many of them would be hosted at the SpaceX facility in hawan California where they had already built a scaled down tube running a mile meanwhile shervin pev the person who encouraged Elon to put together the white papers on the idea had begun setting up his own startup company that would pursue the concept he formed it under the name hyperloop Technologies in June of 2014 after recruiting various engineers and investors they were tasked to develop and solve the engineering problem behind the technology from the compressors that keep the air pressure the magnetic levitation system the electric propulsion unit and even the very tube that it would all be contained within they would have to figure all of this out before anyone else did since there were already multiple companies all racing to do the very same but this was a big deal and there was a lot of hype around this concept major news outlets cover the developments being made and Forbes even put Chev and pev on the cover of their March Edition calling hyperloop the new space race after multiple funding rounds and a high-profile CEO coming on board the company opened a test facility in the Nevada desert by early 2016 the company would showcase their electric propulsion unit on an open Air Track publicly displaying its speed capabilities as it reached over10 mph they also changed their name by this point now going by hyperloop 1 they promised rapid development progress with tubes being assembled for a 1.5 km test truck even more funding was raised following this tens of millions and fact as well as a strategic partnership with massive engineering firms around the world but there was also some trouble on the corporate side of the business co-founder Chevron pev took a leave of absence from the brand after he was accused of sexual misconduct by several women a few months earlier the company's other co-founder and chief technology officer Brogan bam Brogan also left as he alleged the company and its Executives cultivated a toxic work environment which included labor violations assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress he even claimed that after voicing opposition to other Executives a noose was left in his office okay regardless some top Executives were out but the hype kept moving along by summer of 2016 the company struck a deal with the Russian government for a Moscow hyperloop the United Arab Emirates also jumped in investing around $50 million and initiating a feasibility study for a hyperloop in Dubai a sck promotional video was created for the projects with a very ambitious opening date of 2020 by this point those projections were being echoed within the company as well internal documents obtained and reviewed by Forbes in late 2016 stated that the company was expecting to have the first hyperloop ready to move commercial Freight by 2020 and crucially passengers in 2021 however they also estimated the proposed California hyperloop to well exceed what Elon musk's original white papers cost estimate would be in it Elon ES imated that it would cost around $6 billion to build one from LA to Silicon Valley however internal hyperloop 1 estimates put a closer between 9 and $1 13 billion a significant increase the company was clearly not concerned though as they put the future potential Market reach at over $4.7 trillion by 2020 and $9.3 trillion by 2040 they also expected profits to be extremely lucrative as well with billi ions of dollars in profit after a long-term operational run so they would certainly be making back the original high cost to build it this confidence was palpable within the company and excitement was running high as hyperloop was still being deemed as the future of landbased travel this ultimately attracted their largest investor yet Richard Branson of the Virgin group he would join the company's board of directors and create a quote strategic partnership after Branson saw one of their tests at the nvada facility this partnership would also see a rebranding of the entire company now to Virgin hyperloop 1 where virgin would now handle the entire passenger experience development the company would continue to develop their prototype pods and make further progress on securing letters of intent with local and international regions one of which was the nation of Estonia in 2017 that was followed by India in 2018 the latter planning a hyperloop between Mumbai and punon domestically Ohio Missouri and Texas were all seriously exploring possible routes for for a future hyperloop while in 2020 Saudi Arabia also signed a letter of intent and conducted a feasibility study the company also announced that they would be constructing a $500 million certification Center upon 800 acres of land in West Virginia by this point the brand would officially change their name once again now to just simply virgin hyperloop in the same year the company would introduce their passenger prototype pod called the xp-2 and following months of testing at their NADA site the company made head L Again by being the first to test their pod with humans inside the two test pilots the company CTO and the director of Passenger experience were the ones chosen amongst a massive media presence virgin hyperloop became the first to actually trial their technology with human passengers touted as a massive achievement despite the test only reaching around 100 mph far from the touted 6 to 700 mph but still it was a test and many saw it as one step closer to this whole vision of the future becoming a reality a new goal for the company was set for 2025 the year they would hope to get certification and begin construction following this many thought things would begin to accelerate even faster both literally and figuratively but despite some slick computer generated promotional videos of the future more tangible signs of development never seem to have materialized the company was quiet through 2021 the pandemic certainly hindering office work and testing by this point the company also switched up their design now showcasing a top-mounted pod rather than a magli one on the bottom despite raising almost half a billion dollars in funding virgin hyperloop was running out of money in early 2022 the company announced they would be drastically downsizing laying off nearly half of their entire Workforce they also announced a shift in strategy with influence from their largest shareholder a logistics company in the Middle East they were now aiming towards a launch with cargo only and then pivot into passenger travel the thought process was that starting with cargo would be easier as they wouldn't need to perfect the passenger experience which would save money and time however the company's ability to attract talent and money were beginning to weigh virgin hyperloop had long missed its deadlines and advancements they were making in the space were not looking great at least from a public point of view later in 2022 they laid off even more employees and once again rebranded now dropping the Virgin name and going back to hyperloop one Apparently after re-evaluating their short-term priorities the Virgin group thought thought it prudent to remove their branding from the company both employees and investors were beginning to see large cracks in the startup no significant news or progress has been made on their promised projects none of the interest from governments around the world had materialized and the certification facility in West Virginia that they announced back in 2020 was officially cancelled publicly the company was going through a restructuring but there were obvious signs that there was no way they could survive for very long without further Investments especially since the company was basically making no money their time was up on December 21st 2023 Bloomberg reported that hyperloop 1 would cease operations by the end of the year while not officially filing for bankruptcy they were essentially treating it as a chapter 7 liquidating everything and dissolving the company for good much of their R&D and intellectual property would then revert to their largest shareholder DP World a logistics company based in Dubai the rest of their physical presence the test tracks the offices and the machinery is all sort of up in the air much of it will be sold off into Parts possibly to other hyperloop companies but they too are strapped for cash and not looking great hyperloop was a weird phenomenon it has been an idea that futurists have dreamed of for over a century though it can never reach the broad appeal to actually make it happen so it's pretty crazy that suddenly the world was entranced when Elon Musk published the idea via a few Engineers it spawned a whole sub industry of startups all racing to build something that has been never done before at that scale when the proposed budgets for all of these projects ballooned to billions of dollars more than what Elon Musk originally proposed it as and when almost after a decade of work all they had to show for it was a single human test that only reached 100 m hour well the dream was obviously fizzing out remember that's all despite the company raising more than $450 million from their investors but there was obviously a time where many genuinely thought there would be a hyperloop open and operate by 2020 it seems as though everyone was boarding the hype train just not a real train to me hyperloop is very interesting and would be a game changer if it could exist but even as someone who has a limited understanding of engineering and physics I know there are a lot of significant fundamental engineering and logistic hurdles that would need to be overcome for this thing to actually work we don't really know how close they were to actually solving these problems and there are still companies working on it today albeit with much less funding than hyperloop one but those hurdles are pretty massive from The Challenge of keeping a large exposed tube constantly pressurized keeping passengers safe in a pressurized environment at those immense speeds and even making it economically viable building these monster infrastructure projects based on brand new technology that has never been proven before will cost tens of billions of dollars all for small pods that only transport a handful of passengers at a time it seems wildly impractical especially when there are already other proven Transportation methods like maglev and High-Speed Rail they are proven and carry more passengers at high speeds so it's kind of annoying that all this hype and money was invested in this rather than the less flashy modes of transportation that actually work and exist until we live in a future where this technology makes sense in all aspects of its feasibility I think in the end perhaps people paid too much attention to the hype in hyperloop if you like this video and want to support me and my work further plus get a bunch of perks like Polaroids and your name at the end of each video then you can go check out my patreon page a link is in the description below my name is Jake and thank you very much for [Music] [Music] watching [Music] you

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 627,495

Keywords: hyperloop, virgin hyperloop, hyperloop one, elon musk, elon musk boring company, bankrupt company, hyperloop bankrupt, maglev train, maglev train hyperloop, hyperloop dubai, shut down, history, story of, human test, family friendly, HD, clean, 2024, 2023, hyperloop fail, bankrupt concept, news, update, jake williams, bright sun films, train

Id: 5aVIWu7yrH8

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024