IIT Madras Students’ Hyperloop Pod Impresses SpaceX CEO Elon Musk And Others

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is now all praises for a team of students from IIT Madras for developing a design for an autonomous hyperloop pod for India. These group of students, called Avishkar Hyperloop were finalists in the recent SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition 2019 that took place in Los Angeles.  

Elon Musk also met Team Avishkar Hyperloop personally. Their project on an autonomous hyperloop for India could potentially open opportunities for relative lightning-fast transportation between two points through dedicated pathways. At this point in time, Virgin Hyperloop One owned by Jay Walder has proposed a hyperloop that is said to enable travel between Pune to Mumbai in just 30 minutes. Work on the project is said to begin during December 2019.  

As far as Team Avishkar’s hyperloop design is concerned, they developed a pod weighing nearly 120 kilograms and measuring 3 metres in length. Avishkar members began work by fitting the appropriate motors and a vacuum battery pack.  

The subsystem was then built on top of this basic assembly; constraints here included multiple iterations carried out during the assembly stage.  

This design propelled Team Avishkar to the finals of the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition; the team was also the first Asian team in the finals. Winners of the competition were Team Technical University of Munich (TUM) whose hyperloop clocked speeds of 463 km/hr. Nonetheless, with Elon Musk now having identified Team Avishkar’s design, there could be multiple new solutions potentially coming out from the IIT-Madras students.  

Pranit Mehta, one of the members of Team Avishkar led by second-year MTech student Suyash Singh, even tweeted the meeting with Elon Musk: 

Along with Elon Musk, Team Avishkar interacted with Josh Geigel - Co-Founder at Virgin Hyperloop One as well, regarding the progress of the hyperloop project in India.   

“Always encouraging to see the next generation of thinkers embracing this transformative technology!,” stated Virgin Hyperloop One in a tweet.  

Also Read: Pune To Mumbai In Under 30 Minutes With Virgin Hyperloop One, Work On First Phase Likely To Begin By December 2019