Musk publishes the Hyperloop concept
A white paper proposed passenger pods in low-pressure tubes, and Musk invited others to build it.
Archive entry. This article looks back at an event from August 12, 2013. It was drafted with AI assistance from public records and is being fact-checked. See our About page.
On August 12, 2013, Elon Musk released a white paper, "Hyperloop Alpha," describing a high-speed transport system. Passenger capsules would travel through low-pressure tubes, with a proposed route between Los Angeles and San Francisco covering the distance in roughly half an hour.
Musk said he was too busy running Tesla and SpaceX to build it himself, and invited others to take the idea forward.
What followed
Several companies formed to develop the technology. In 2015 SpaceX announced a pod design competition for student teams, and the first one was held in January 2017 on a test track outside its Hawthorne headquarters. No commercial Hyperloop route has opened to date, but the idea helped inspire The Boring Company's tunneling work.
