India's Top Tech Institute to Take Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop Pod' Forward with Young Intl. Engineers

For the first time, the Hyperloop Pod contest, kick-started by Elon Musk in 2015, is set to be hosted in India at the Chennai campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in July 2020.

On Wednesday, IIT Chennai said the competition would see international techies develop and present an efficient prototype of the technologies.

Back in 2019, a team called “Avishkaar” (invention) from IIT in Chennai emerged as the only Asian team to enter the finals of Elon Musk’s California-based contest. The team developed and showcased India’s first self propelled tube traveler and also got a chance to meet and interact with Musk.

​The teams that reach the finals of the Indian Hyperloop Pod Contest would have to build a fully functional prototype of their design for demonstration at the Hyperloop Test Track in the campus of IIT in Chennai.

This competition would allow three teams to run their Pods on an open-air track, which would eventually scale up to being enclosed in a vacuum tube.

India has been accelerating its efforts into bringing the environment friendly Hyperloop mode of transportation to the country.

In August 2019, the government in India's Maharashtra state approved a proposal to build the world's first Hyperloop transportation project between the cities of Mumbai and Pune.

Another Hyperloop transportation project is expected to be undertaken between the cities of Vijayawada and Amaravati in the south-eastern coastal state of Andhra Pradesh. This project is the only other one that has gone beyond the memorandum stage in India.

Another Hyperloop project is expected to begin operating in the UAE in 2020. Similar projects are reportedly underway in China and parts of Europe.

In 2015, ElonMusk kick-started an international contest in California called the “Hyperloop Pod” funded by his space company SpaceX.