In March, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies set up a joint venture with local investors to conduct feasibility study on building hyperloop in Indonesia

 

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), one of the two global companies building the hyperloop technology, today announced that it had begun the construction of what it claimed to be world’s first full-scale passenger capsule in Spain, on a collaboration with Carbures S. A.

The passenger capsule is currently a work-in-progress and will be delivered to HTT’s R&D center in Toulouse, France, in early 2018.

The company had recently set up a joint venture in Indonesia with local investors to conduct feasibility study to build hyperloop in the country, and it said that the current construction will be ready for Indonesia in 2020.

HTT said in a press statement that the feasibility study itself is currently ongoing; and in previous interview with e27 Chairman Bebop G. Gresta said that it will be conducted between three to six months.

The joint venture invested US$2.5 million for the study and is exploring three potential routes: Jakarta to Soekarno-Hatta airport in Tangerang, major airports in Java, and major airports in Sumatra.

Aiming to begin implementation in Jakarta first, Gresta said that the partnership between HTT and Carbures aim to build “faster” and “better solution” to solve the city’s transportation issues.

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However, some questions remain regarding the implementation of hyperloop in Indonesia.

The country is currently in the process of ramping up its transportation infrastructure, starting from an underground MRT system in Jakarta. The project has entered its second phase, reaching 65 per cent completion by early March.

President Jowo Widodo’s administration has also set up plans to build “24 seaports, 15 airports, power plants with a capacity of 35,000 megawatts and nine million hectares of agriculture land” by 2019 as part of their effort to push economic growth by seven per cent.

It remains to be seen how the hyperloop technology will complement these government project.

Though Minister of Transportation Budi Karya Sumadi was present during the MOU-signing ceremony of the joint venture, by the time of the event there had been no written agreement between the company and the government.

e27 has reached out to HTT to clarify these questions and will update as soon as possible.

Image Credit: HTT

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Source: e27