Published
11 months agoon
Remember the attention Elon Musk drew when he built a one-mile prototype Hyperloop tunnel in Southern California at SpaceX headquarters?
Well, it’s gone.
The test tunnel in Hawthorne was supposed to offer the world a peek at Musk’s would-be revolutionary transportation network. Now it’s parking space for Space X employees, Bloomberg reports.
We’re guessing that to get one of those spaces, you best drive an old-fashioned Tesla.
On the bright side (and with apologies to Joni Mitchell), it’s not like Musk “paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
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The Hyperloop demonstration tunnel, shown here in 2019 in Hawthorne, California, once hosted student science competitions. (Shutterstock)
Musk once predicted that his Hyperloop system would cut the travel time between San Francisco and Los Angeles to 30 minutes.
However, he appears more focused these days on other ventures such as his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
Andrew J. Hawkins writes at The Verge that “in the last few years, Musk’s Hyperloop ambitions have been severely scaled back. His original proposal for an underground transit system, with magnetically levitating shuttles traveling through nearly airless tubes at speeds of up to hundreds of miles an hour, has been replaced with tunnels that can only accommodate Tesla vehicles. Other Hyperloop startups have shut down or pivoted to cargo shipments.”
Bill McEwen is news director and columnist for GV Wire. He joined GV Wire in August 2017 after 37 years at The Fresno Bee. With The Bee, he served as Opinion Editor, City Hall reporter, Metro columnist, sports columnist and sports editor through the years. His work has been frequently honored by the California Newspapers Publishers Association, including authoring first-place editorials in 2015 and 2016. Bill and his wife, Karen, are proud parents of two adult sons, and they have two grandsons. You can contact Bill at 559-492-4031 or at Send an Email