Swissloop enters second round of SpaceX competition

Leybold, subsidiary of Atlas Copco (Stockholm, Sweden) announced March 7 its support of the Swissloop vacuum tube transportation concept created by students from ETH Zurich.

The Swissloop team have surpassed thousands of other teams and are finalists in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition of US entrepreneur Elon Musk. This summer the Swiss get another chance to prove themselves in the second and final round with their enhanced capsule.

“We are very happy about the participation in the final and would like to thank ETH Zurich and our sponsors for their support," says Swissloop CEO and ETH student Luca Di Tizio.

“The challenge of creating something fundamentally new that revolutionizes traditional means of transport naturally motivates us enormously," says Johan Van der Eeken, managing director of Leybold.

The Hyperloop concept is based essentially on vacuum technology: the vacuum tunnel massively reduces air resistance and thus enables smooth driving at speeds of up to
1,000 kilometers per hour. At the same time, the tube offers sufficient space for solar panels.
The energy required to maintain the vacuum can be obtained from the modules located on the surface of the vacuum tubes.

The final round of the hyperloop pod competition will be held on 22 July 2018 at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, CA.