The Race to Create Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Heats Up
I hate to be so negative. Elon is a really bright guy and electric cars are fantastic; a real advancement away from fossil fuels. We need more of that!<p>But we don&#x27;t need hyperloop. We need decent subways, lightrail, buses and trams. And decently fast (200km&#x2F;h) intercity trains. We don&#x27;t lack the technology or the engineering, we lack the political will. Pissing away billions on more techno fantasy is just a distraction while the number of cars and parking lots and freeways just keeps on growing, accreting ever more, little by little, like it has for the past 60 years in the US. The layout of and density of US cities is already profoundly inefficient due to streets, parking lots, and freeways.<p>A lot of comments here seem to be betting big on self-driving cars, like somehow magic chariots will appear from the sky and whisk us away to fairy land where we never have to look at a stranger or sit in a seat next to someone we don&#x27;t know, or god, touch a railing! And they&#x27;ll just as easily disappear into the ether where they require neither maintenance nor upkeep, storage, or cleaning. Apparently these self-driving cars will also run on magic engines that are somehow going to be more efficient than electric light rail or subway, or god forbid, a bike.