The first Hyperloop pod competition took place over the weekend, with thousands of students competing to design the future of transportation at Texas A&M University. The race is just getting started, but we already have our first set of winning teams.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) took home the top prize for Best Overall Design. Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands got second place and the Pod Innovation Award. The rest of the top five includes the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Virginia Tech and the University of California Irvine. Special Shout-out to Lehigh University, too, which placed in the top 20 and is the alma mater of our own Todd Haselton. In total, 22 teams will have a chance to test their prototypes this summer at the SpaceX track in California.
MIT’s winning pod is theoretically capable of accelerating at “2.4G to a max speed of 110m/s”. The design also features a special fail-safe system that brakes automatically if anything goes wrong. It even includes built-in wheels to travel forwards or backwards at a low speed in an emergency.
It’s an exciting start, though the pods won’t actually be built and tested until mid-2016. For now, you can check out MIT’s design along with some earlier Hyperloop concepts in the gallery above.
