Hyperloop One, a Los Angeles-based startup working on making Elon Musk’s crazy-fast vacuum tube transportation blueprint a reality, has agreed to partner with the Summa Group and the Russian Government to build a Hyperloop in Moscow.
The Summa Group is a Russsian investment group with a large stake in infrastructure investments in the country including port logistics, engineering, construction, telecommunications and the oil and gas sectors.
Both the Russian government and the investment group see Hyperloop One as a crucial partner in exploring ways to connect Moscow’s roughly 16 million citizens to new forms of transportation. The Hyperloop promises to be able to shoot people from San Francisco to L.A. in less than 35 minutes and the startup would like to bring that same technology to Muscovites.
Russia’s transportation system is one of the world’s most extensive at 4,800 miles (7,700 km). And, while Moscow already has a comparatively large metro system, with 200 stations stretching across about 207 miles, according to Wikipedia, the Hyperloop could significantly increase the speed at which citizens shoot from point A to B within the city and across the vast country.
But the development will also help push the country toward “an economically attractive alternative to the existing global logistics flows,” Summa Group founder Ziyavudin Magomedov said.
In other words, Russia is an important partner for Hyperloop One’s future shipping hopes.
The startup will need Russia’s help to set in motion an initiative to deliver products at lightning speed across the Eurasian Economic Union and help catalyze China’s plan to create a “One Road” product delivery mechanism throughout the region and across the globe.
“Our longer term vision is to work with Russia to implement a transformative new Silk Road: a cargo Hyperloop that whisks freight containers from China to Europe in a day,” Hyperloop One co-founder Shervin Pishevar said.
The startup has told me in past interviews it is working on a similar plan for transporting products arriving at the port of Los Angeles to the middle of the U.S. within hours. It also has feasibility studies underway to do the same in Finland, Sweden, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Dubai, and the United Kingdom.
The partnership with Russia is just one more point of connection, but a big one with a giant, formidable country, in a plan to increase the rate at which consumers could one day buy something from halfway around the world and get it before the sun goes down.