Technology

As a Californian, the state should sue for damages and use the funds for high speed rail. The entire hype around this stupid tech was to torpedo high speed rail in the state so Musk could sell more cars. I get that this is Branson's spinoff, but the tech isn't viable and all the investor hype around it was just a smokescreen for public policy control and that HAS to result in some sort of reparations, it's basically fraud in my opinion. The assets should be sold off and put towards public transit.

The Hyperloop scam to kill high speed rail implementation:

https://lovetransit.substack.com/p/the-hyperloop-is-a-scam-by-elon-musk

Dubai port operator DP World wound up with majority control of the startup, and pivoted its focus to cargo in early 2022, cutting half the staff at the time and dropping the Virgin moniker.

It makes sense that they'd drop the name Virgin after DP world took over.

DP World will wind up with Hyperloop One’s intellectual property, Bloomberg reports, while the rest of its hard assets — including a test track outside Las Vegas and other machinery — will be sold off.

Wonder how much of the value (if any) was in the IP, which will be solely owned by a company mainly focused on maritime trade.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Hyperloop One, once backed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, will cease operations on December 31 according to Bloomberg News.

It’s the latest stumble in the tech industry’s attempt to bring life to an idea Elon Musk first put forth in a white paper in 2013.

The original pitch for the hyperloop sounds like a zero interest rate fever dream: build lengthy vacuum-sealed tubes for shipping people and goods at super-high speeds.

But when Branson criticized Saudi Arabia following the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, the Kingdom pulled a planned project with the startup, and the billionaire stepped down as chairman.

Dubai port operator DP World wound up with majority control of the startup, and pivoted its focus to cargo in early 2022, cutting half the staff at the time and dropping the Virgin moniker.

DP World will wind up with Hyperloop One’s intellectual property, Bloomberg reports, while the rest of its hard assets — including a test track outside Las Vegas and other machinery — will be sold off.

The original article contains 245 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 31%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

To everyone implying that Elon leveraged the concept of hyperloop to kill high speed rail in California:

California killed high speed rail in California. The project is like 3x over budget with no real end in sight. If Elon dedicated his entire net worth in 2013 to the project it would still be over budget.