Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson will meet Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday to brief him about the Virgin Hyperloop One project that will connect Pune to Mumbai.
In Mumbai to promote his Virgin Atlantic airline, Mr. Branson said it would be a courtesy call to clear “misunderstandings” and to gauge the new administration’s interest in the hyperloop project.
The project, first mooted during the previous government’s rule, is estimated to cost $10 billion. Mr. Branson’s visit to Mr. Thackeray comes after the new government decided to review several infrastructure projects, such as the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train.
He said, “The entire cost of the [hyperloop] project will be borne by the private sector and it will not depend on any funding from the State.”
Stating that he would clear any misunderstandings regarding the project, he said, “We just need to see whether the new government is as keen as the old government [on the project].”
Mr. Branson said engineers at the group’s hyperloop facility in Las Vegas are working on the project, and are ready to “get going quite soon” with the Mumbai-Pune project, which will reduce travel time to 20 to 30 minutes as compared to several hours today.
The previous government had accorded infrastructure status to the project.
Hyperloop is a new technology wherein vacuum is used to transport people and cargo at a very high speed. The technology is yet to be commercially launched and the Pune-Mumbai hyperloop project could be one of the first few projects globally.
Once passengers or cargo is loaded into the hyperloop vehicle, it accelerates through electric propulsion and floats above the track using magnetic levitation to reach the destination.
It glides at airline speeds for long distances due to ultra-low aerodynamic drag and is thus called revolutionary technology.
