Daryl Oster, CEO of ET3, said his tube transport company has attracted competition in the next generation transportation field—the most recognizable being Elon Musk's Hyperloop. Oster said that tubes, which enable car-sized passenger capsules, could be optimized for value, and could reshape how people travel, reducing labor and fuel costs to less than a tenth of the cost of flying. Hyperloop, Oster said, is regional, whereas ET3 is a "freeway" with access points all along the route.
TechRepublic caught up with Oster at the 2017 Smart Cincy Summit and you can watch the full interview above.
"Our vision is being able to travel from, say, here in Cincinnati to the Taj Mahal in under three hours for 50 bucks," said Oster.
"ET3 we call it a mag-lev limo, where it's a car-sized vehicle that operates in a network of tubes much life cars on a freeway," Oster said. "But, it would be international and global in scope."
At the Smart Cincy Summit, Mike Stanley, CEO of TransitX, talked about "tube travel" as well. Stanley was part of a panel on the future of mass transit and the role of infrastructure development in smart transportation. He talked to TechRepublic about a central paradox he sees regarding smart transportation.
"People are not willing to sacrifice personal convenience for the greater good," he said. He also discussed how to solve the problems that emerge when society's wants and needs are in conflict.
"I look at what the impossible dream is," Stanley said. "I'm talking about making car-free cities within five years."
You can watch Stanley's full interview with TechRepublic here.
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boioing on May 8th, 2017 at 00:19 UTC »
I love how he says "emails travel at the speed of light... OUR vehicles will travel at ONLY 4000 MILES PER HOUR." And also, engineering tube travel is going to be "much easier than automating email and telecommunications."
There have been a lot of good critiques of hyperloop and tube travel. Most of them focus on how any failure of the vacuum or vehicles is going to be catastrophic. If the tube is breached, the rush of air is going to hit your pod like a ton of bricks. It's like a transcontinental highway that fails in its entirety if any section of it is compromised.
Sirisian on May 7th, 2017 at 23:04 UTC »
Cincinnati to Taj Mahal
Assuming it's going through the standard Alaska to Russia approach that 8,800 miles optimal. At the quoted less than 3 hours that's ~3,000 mph. For comparison the Hyperloop is targeting around 760 mph (11.5 hours for the trip). Maglev trains for reference are about 270 mph (32.5 hours for the trip). Flying is at best ~18 hours I think.
3K mph seems overly optimistic. That's almost as good as teleportation if it's easy to use. That said I'm a huge fan of optimal transportation networks on a globally standardized scale. At anything less than $100 I would jump into a tube and have lunch in a different country for fun once in a while. That would probably do wonders for the tourism industry.
linuxdev2 on May 7th, 2017 at 19:03 UTC »
Tube networks spanning the planet.
Even for futurology, this is pretty far in the future.
We can talk about this once the first working, open-to-public tube pods start doing daily business.
Asimov thought of this half a century ago.