Meet Tanay Manjrekar, an engineer from Pune who created a history by riding the Virgin Hyperloop in one of the first human test-rides. Incidentally, he is also the first Indian to ever ride the Hyperloop.
Josh Giegel, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer and Sara Luchian, Director of Passenger Experience, were the first people in the world to ride on this new form of transportation. The testing campaign will continue with Tanay Manjrekar, Virgin Hyperloop’s Power Electronics Specialist and native of Pune, riding next.
“Working on hyperloop – let alone being one of the first to ride it – is truly a dream come true,” said Tanay Manjrekar, Power Electronics Specialist at Virgin Hyperloop. “It is my hope that India sees the tremendous opportunity ahead of them – to embrace the challenge and leapfrog the rest of the world yet again – and continues to progress the Pune-Mumbai hyperloop project.”
The human testing, from the beginning stages all the way through to successful demonstration, was overseen by the industry-recognised Independent Safety Assessor (ISA) Certifer. Having undergone a rigorous and exhaustive safety process, the newly-unveiled XP-2 vehicle demonstrates many of the safety-critical systems that will be found on a commercial hyperloop system and is equipped with a state-of-the-art control system that can detect abnormal conditions and rapidly trigger appropriate emergency responses.
In India, the concept of hyperloop is gaining popularity when the plan of connecting Mumbai and Pune by plummeting the travel time to 25 minutes was put forth. While the production vehicle will be larger and seat up to 28 passengers, this 2-seater XP-2 vehicle was built to demonstrate that passengers can in fact safely travel in a hyperloop vehicle.
This announcement builds on significant progress around the world on the regulatory front. In India, the Government of Maharashtra approved the Virgin Hyperloop-DP World Consortium as the Original Project Proponent (OPP) for the Mumbai-Pune hyperloop project.
This is a landmark announcement for building the Pune-Mumbai hyperloop transportation system, recognising hyperloop technology alongside other more traditional forms of mass transit.
“Today’s test is a significant step forward towards a commercial hyperloop in India – perhaps the world’s first – connecting Pune with Mumbai along the existing Expressway,” said Harj Dhaliwal, Managing Director of Middle East and India for Virgin Hyperloop. “The opportunity for India to lead the world in this new form of transportation is unprecedented. The project would be the largest private infrastructure investment in Maharashtra, creating 1.8 million direct and indirect jobs and $36 billion USD in socio-economic benefits.”
Virgin Hyperloop is the only company in the world that has successfully tested hyperloop technology at scale, launching the first new mode of mass transportation in over 100 years.
