Hyperloop

Elon Musk published Hyperloop Alpha on Aug 12, 2013, a design for pods in a low-pressure tube carrying people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 35 minutes for under $6 billion. As of Nov 9, 2026 no passenger Hyperloop runs anywhere; The Boring Company lists a short test tunnel in Texas, and Musk says it is working on a slower "precursor" tunnel from Austin to San Antonio.

3:27 As of Nov 9, 2026, no Hyperloop carries passengers anywhere in the world. The newest step is a post: on Sep 20, 2026 Musk wrote that The Boring Company "is working on a simple, precursor Hyperloop tunnel between Austin and San Antonio (>200 mph)" (Musk on X), and the company's own site lists a short Hyperloop test tunnel at Bastrop, Texas as "Test Track Complete and In Use" (The Boring Company, read Nov 9, 2026). Musk announced the idea in full on Aug 12, 2013, with a 57-page design called Hyperloop Alpha. In the clip, from his press call that day, he says he is "somewhat tempted" to build a demonstration prototype, but not right away, because SpaceX and Tesla came first.

Status: Changed. Last checked: Nov 9, 2026.

The 2013 design

2:16 Musk first described it in public at the D11 conference in May 2013 as "a cross between a Concorde and a rail gun and an air hockey table", aimed at the California high-speed rail plan he called the slowest and costliest bullet train in the world (The Wall Street Journal).

Hyperloop Alpha, posted on Tesla's blog and SpaceX's site on Aug 12, 2013, filled in the numbers (Hyperloop Alpha). Capsules for 28 people would ride on cushions of air inside a tube held at about 100 pascals, roughly a thousandth of sea-level pressure, pushed by linear electric motors to as fast as 760 mph. Pods would leave every two minutes on average and every 30 seconds at rush hour, carrying 7.4 million people a year per tube. The paper called it "an open design concept, similar to Linux", and asked for feedback by email to SpaceX and Tesla rather than building it himself. In his own blog post he framed it as the right answer for busy city pairs under about 900 miles apart.

Every promise and what happened

Promised	When he said it	What happened
Los Angeles to San Francisco in 35 minutes	Aug 12, 2013, Hyperloop Alpha	No route has been built or started by anyone as of Nov 9, 2026
A cost under $6 billion, or $7.5 billion with car-carrying capsules	Aug 12, 2013	Never tested; no full-size line exists to price
$20 plus operating costs for a one-way ticket	Aug 12, 2013	No paying passenger has ever ridden a hyperloop; Hyperloop One closed without one (Engadget)
Top speed of 760 mph	Aug 12, 2013	SpaceX's official competition results top out at 288 mph, in Jul 2019 (SpaceX, archived)
Probably a demonstration prototype, later	Aug 12, 2013, press call	Done in a different form: a one-mile SpaceX test tube for student pods, 2016 to 2019, removed in 2022 (Fox Business)
A Boring Company Hyperloop from New York to Washington, D.C., with "verbal" government approval	2017 (Electrek)	Never built (Electrek, Sep 21, 2026)
Austin to San Antonio in under 30 minutes at more than 200 mph	Sep 20, 2026, on X	No date given, so not yet due; no route, cost or timeline published by Nov 9, 2026 (TechCrunch)

What came of it

2015 to 2019: SpaceX's test tube. SpaceX announced a Hyperloop Pod Competition in 2015 and built a test tube about one mile long with a six-foot diameter beside its headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Student teams raced pods in it in Jan 2017, Aug 2017, Jul 2018 and Jul 21, 2019, and the Technical University of Munich team won top speed every time, ending at 288 mph (SpaceX, archived; TUM, Jul 21, 2019). That is 38% of the speed in the 2013 design. No competition has been held since 2019.

Nov 8, 2020: the only passenger test. Virgin Hyperloop, a separate company Musk did not own, sent two of its own employees along a 500-meter test track in the Nevada desert, the first people to ride in a hyperloop pod (CBS News, Nov 9, 2020).

Feb 2022: passengers dropped. The same company laid off 111 people, almost half its staff, and turned to freight; its majority owner DP World said cargo customers were more interested and passengers were further off (Fortune, Feb 22, 2022).

2022: SpaceX's tube comes down. Bloomberg reported that the Hawthorne test tube had been dismantled and the project "indefinitely shelved", with employee parking in its place (Fox Business, Nov 4, 2022, citing Bloomberg). The same year The Boring Company built a short test tunnel at Bastrop, Texas "to test the vacuum pump systems" (The Boring Company). On Nov 9, 2026, spacex.com/hyperloop opened SpaceX's home page, with no Hyperloop page left.

Dec 2023: Hyperloop One closes. Bloomberg reported that Hyperloop One, called Virgin Hyperloop One from 2017 to 2022, would shut down, and a staff member confirmed it to Engadget: most employees had been laid off, the rest would leave on Dec 31, 2023, and its test tracks and machinery were for sale (Engadget, Dec 22, 2023). It never won a contract to build a working system.

Sep 20, 2026: a precursor in Texas. Musk said a Boring Company tunnel could cut a trip of up to 2.5 hours between Austin and San Antonio to "a consistent <30 mins" (Musk on X). The Boring Company replied that it "would be excited and honored to build" it (TechCrunch, Sep 20, 2026). More than 200 mph is less than a third of the 2013 design's speed, and the company describes its tunnels as Loops for electric cars on its other projects (The Boring Company).

Why the status is Changed: Hyperloop Alpha set no date and Musk never promised to build the Los Angeles line himself, so nothing is late; what exists is different from what he described. There is a closed student test tube, a short test tunnel in Texas and a proposal for a slower tunnel, and no passenger system at the speed, price or route of 2013.

We think

We think no Boring Company tunnel between Austin and San Antonio will be under construction by the end of 2027. As of Nov 9, 2026 there is a post and a reply, with no route, cost, financing or permit published, and the company's earlier Hyperloop plans for the Northeast never left the announcement stage.

Confidence: Likely. Check by: Dec 2027.

We think that if anything Musk calls a Hyperloop carries passengers first, it will run in a tunnel at normal air pressure, well below 760 mph, closer to his 200 mph figure. The 2026 pitch already drops the speed by more than two thirds, and The Boring Company's only system carrying riders, in Las Vegas, uses ordinary electric cars.

Confidence: Possible. Check by: Dec 2028.