Virgin Hyperloop One is taking its show on the road.
The Los Angeles-based company is currently visiting multiple cities across the country to showcase its XP-1 hyperloop pod, which completed the world's first full-system hyperloop test in 2017.
"It is not possible to take everybody out to see our facility so we thought, 'Why not bring hyperloop to them?'" Jay Walder, the CEO of Virgin Hyperloop One, told Cheddar on Friday.
The company, whose test facility is in the Nevada desert, has already made stops in Ohio and Texas, and will visit cities in Kansas and Missouri next month.
Virgin Hyperloop One, which was developed by Virgin founder Richard Branson, is the first company to successfully operate a full-scale hyperloop vehicle system, which uses electric propulsion and electromagnetic levitation in depressurized tubes to propel vehicles at hundreds of miles per hour.
Hyperloop pods "will float on a bed of air with magnetic levitation," Walder said.
During the XP-1's successful test in May 2017, the pod hit a record speed of 240 miles per hour on just 550 yards of track.
The federal government also recently established the Non-Traditional and Emerging Transportation Technology Council, which is mandated with identifying regulatory gaps and creating standards for implementing new types of high-tech transportation systems, such as hyperloop routes and autonomous vehicles.
"The reaction has been phenomenal," Walder said regarding the Virgin Hyperloop One's roadshow. The company's caravan, Walder said, was even pulled over during the drive to Ohio by curious police eager to get a closer look at the hyperloop pod.
In Texas, the company coordinated with the Dallas Cowboys and local governments to display the XP-1 at AT&T Stadium. The Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Transportation Council was at the presentation to evaluate how the technology might be used to connect Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and neighboring communities, Virgin Hyperloop One said.
When the roadshow arrives in Kansas City in September, the company will meet with local officials and host demonstrations for residents.
"There has been so much excitement and interest in this technology," Ryan Weber, the president of the KC Tech Council, said in a statement. "We know the Kansas City tech community and general public will be receptive to the demonstration and learning more details."
The 4,000 mile route that the company will complete includes 70 hours of driving, Virgin Hyperloop One said; with hyperloop, the same route would take six.
President Donald Trump says he will allow Nvidia to sell its H200 computer chip used in the development of artificial intelligence to “approved customers” in China. Trump said Monday on his social media site that he had informed China’s leader Xi Jinping and “President Xi responded positively!” There had been concerns about allowing advanced computer chips into China as it could help them to compete against the U.S. in building out AI capabilities. But there has also been a desire to develop the AI ecosystem with American companies such as chipmaker Nvidia.
The end of 2025 is almost upon us. And it’s time to unpack Spotify Wrapped. On Wednesday, the music streaming giant delivered its annual recap — giving its hundreds of millions of users worldwide a look at the top songs, artists, podcasts and other audio they listened to over the past year. Spotify isn’t the only platform to roll out a yearly glimpse of data collected from consumers’ online lives. But since its launch about a decade ago, Wrapped has become one of the most anticipated. And Spotify is billing the 2025 edition to be the biggest yet, with a host of new features it hopes may also address some disappointments users had last year.
Elon Musk’s X unveiled a feature that lets users see where an account is based. Online sleuths and experts quickly found that many popular accounts, often posting in support of the U.S. MAGA movement with thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, are based outside the U.S. This raises concerns about foreign influence in U.S. politics.
The Enhanced Games is going public in two ways — with a new listing on the Nadsaq stock exchange and also by offering a direct-to-consumer business focused on performance products.
Real estate software company RealPage has agreed to stop sharing nonpublic information between landlords as part of a settlement with the Department of Justice.
2025’s top Black Friday tech deals from smart speakers to wearables. Tom’s Guide editor Kate Kozuch shares expert picks and tips for smart holiday shopping.
Computer chipmaker Nvidia is poised to release a quarterly earnings report that is expected to either deepen a recent downturn in the stock market or prompt an ebullient sigh of relief among investors increasingly worried the world’s most valuable company is perched upon an artificial intelligence bubble about to burst.