West Virginia Executive Fall 2020 | Page 99

Country Roads , Loops Take Us Home

AMANDA LARCH
VIRGIN HYPERLOOP

Revolutionizing Transportation from Almost Heaven

When people think of West Virginia , they often picture beautiful mountains , active coal mines and tight-knit communities . While natives know Almost Heaven is all that and more , outsiders don ’ t often associate the Mountain State with things like cutting-edge technology and major innovation .
In October , Virgin Hyperloop — a member of the multinational venture conglomerate Virgin Group Ltd .— announced that , after an extensive search , West Virginia was chosen as the site of its new safety certification center , which will be used to regulate and test the safety systems behind Hyperloop before it becomes available for wide-scale use .
A New Way to Travel
Hyperloop is a new form of sustainable , high-speed mass transit that produces zero direct emissions . Hyperloop vehicles , also known as pods , will travel at speeds of up to 600 miles per hour through tubes , which have no atmospheric pressure . Hyperloop ’ s proprietary maglev system causes the vehicles to successfully travel through the tubes safely and quickly . In 2017 , Virgin Hyperloop One completed its third phase of testing , achieving test speeds of 240 miles per hour , and it was estimated that a trip from New York to Washington , D . C ., could take as little as 30 minutes .
WWW . WVEXECUTIVE . COM FALL 2020 93