Like many tech origin stories, Hyperloop Technologies started out in a humble garage. Operations moved in August 2014 from a Los Feliz home to a 6,500-square-foot industrial space (a former ice factory) in downtown's Arts District, a stone's throw from hot eatery Bestia and a future Soho House. The headquarters expanded to 17,000 square feet in June. The company has 30 employees and is rapidly growing.
On June 12, The Hollywood Reporter was invited to observe as Hyperloop Technologies installed its first test rig in a former trucking depot not far from its downtown headquarters. About 40 feet of steel pipe, measuring 12 feet in diameter, was laid down by crane. A test track will begin construction sometime in 2016.
Between his commitments to Tesla and SpaceX, billionaire inventor Elon Musk had no time to focus on Hyperloop, so he made his 58-page proposal open-source. Enter former SpaceX engineer Brogan BamBrogan (center) and Shervin Pishevar (right) — a 40-year-old venture capitalist whose early investment in Uber made him a billionaire. The pair, pictured here with Josh Jiegel, vp design and analysis, raised $8.5 million in seed money to launch the company; the next round will aim for $80 million, half of which Pishevar intends on putting up himself.
Easygoing Brogan BamBrogan (right, with Josh Jiegel) is an aerospace engineer who was instrumental in designing the Falcon 1 and Dragon spacecraft for Elon Musk's SpaceX. At Hyperloop, BamBrogan has shifted the focus from passenger travel to cargo: He envisions the technology, which produces no greenhouse emissions, as an alternative to freighters, the 16 largest of which produce as much pollution as all the world's cars put together.
Hyperloop was conceived in 2013 by Elon Musk as a new form of ground transportation that shoots pods through sealed tubes at the speed of sound. Each pod has a giant compressor fan at the front that transfers huge amounts of air away from the nose. Air bearings beneath the pods will suspend them on a cushion of compressed air. The pods will then be propelled along something called a "magnetic river," created by induction motors laid along the tube track. To reach transonic speeds, the tube interior will be reduced to a near-vacuum — akin to the atmosphere on Mars — making drag practically nonexistent.
Co-founder Shervin Pishevar pitched President Obama at length during a meeting at the White House. The president promised to read Elon Musk's Hyperloop report that night, and later handed it over to the Office of Science & Technology, whose scientists found the proposal scientifically sound.
Hyperloop Technologies co-founder Shervin Pishevar is a close confidante of Elon Musk's. Also on the board: SpaceX engineer and co-founder Brogan BamBrogan; former White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, who oversaw President Obama's 2012 election campaign; David Sacks, a former executive at Musk's PayPal and founder of Yammer (acquired by Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion); Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation; and 32-year-old tech mogul Joe Lonsdale, founder of Palantir, a data-crunching software company worth $9 billion.
Iran-born Shervin Pishevar is the rare tech mogul who moves comfortably among the Hollywood elite. The divorced father of two counts Jay Z, Ashton Kutcher and Leonardo DiCaprio among his inner circle. All were early investors in Uber, at Pishevar's urging.
An early working prototype of Hyperloop's vacuum-tube technology is operational in a lot behind the company's offices. Hyperloop Technology engineers like Filip Finodeyev oversee live results on monitors in a nearby control room.
Hyperloop can theoretically achieve speeds exceeding 760 miles per hour, almost 200 mph faster than a Boeing 777's top speed. But big challenges lie ahead — earthquakes, geological irregularities and the limits of the human body to name a few. Competing with Hyperloop Technologies to become the Wright Brothers of supersonic tube travel is a rival startup: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, also based in L.A. To further encourage competition, Elon Musk has announced the construction of his own mile-long test track in Hawthorne, Calif. (home to SpaceX headquarters), and is holding a pod-design contest for college students and independent designers as well.