ABU DHABI 29 March, 2017: Hyperloop says you do not have to imagine – for it will be a reality soon enough – that you will be travelling at a phenomenal speed of 1,080 kmph.
To put it in context, the highest reached by a manned vehicle was by Apollo 10 orbiting the Earth – and that was a little over a phenomenal 39,897 kmph.
Super-speed transport firm, Hyperloop One is focusing a lot of effort in the Gulf, mapping out and explaining its strategy for the region – where it claims that with its system, you can reach any city in the GCC inside of an hour.
Commercial Focus
But apart from passenger side, the apple is the commercial potential.
Hyperloop One Executive Chairman and Co-Founder, Shervin Pishevar, is selling the benefit of providing employment in GCC countries.
“We’re thinking beyond the benefits that Hyperloop will offer companies, connecting the GCC with Hyperloop will enable governments to address the region’s youth bulge, by providing young jobseekers with the opportunity to explore new, exciting job prospects,” Pishevar said in a statement delivered at the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit, GMIS 2017.
In the wider GCC, the cargo transportation market was worth approximately US$35 billion in 2016, according to McKinsey & Co.
Of this, Hyperloop One has an addressable share of around $12 billion, excluding short-haul, intra-city shipping and low-value commodity freight such as oil and chemicals, metals and minerals and agriculture and food products.
Hyperloop One would compete for 100 per cent of air freight in the GCC, a $7 billion market, 22 per cent of the surface freight, which is approximately $3 billion in road and rail freight and 13 per cent of the maritime freight, equating to roughly $2 billion.
Senior Vice-President of Hyperloop One’s Global Operations, Nick Earle, brought to light the transformative effect that Hyperloop One will have on manufacturing, logistics, supply chain and warehousing.
These sectors, he noted, will benefit from increased capital due to reducing finished goods inventories by 25 per cent, access to ten times larger talent pools with the same commute time and saving up to 80 percent on real estate costs, as well as shorter lead times, reduced freight spend and slashed CO2 emissions.
At two-thirds the cost, three times the speed and approximately four times the benefit of high-speed rail, Hyperloop will have a tangible impact on current and future businesses and society. Hyperloop will transform transportation, driving value throughout the ecosystem and enabling job creation, while also empowering workers with the ability to commute quickly and easily.
This, in particular, will help to provide employment opportunities to the 200 million youth that live in the Middle East and North Africa, the largest growing sector of the region’s population.
Held in Abu Dhabi from 27th to 30th March, the inaugural GMIS brings together decision-making leaders from governments, businesses and civil society organisations to shape a vision for the manufacturing sector’s future.
– By Rajive Singh