Dubai: Hyperloop, a high-speed mass transportation system for passengers and freight, is likely to be rolled out first in India or Saudi Arabia before in the UAE, said Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO of DP World.
Our hope is that when we achieve economies of scale and you have long routes and it is popular, probably for the speed of an aeroplane you will pay with the price of a truck.
The system is currently being developed by several companies, including Virgin Hyperloop, in which Dubai-based port operator DP World holds a majority stake.
The company tested human travel in a hyperloop pod for the first time in November last year.
"It’s not decades, it’s years," Sulayem told CNN in an interview at the Expo 2020 site, where the company is exhibiting a full-scale Hyperloop pod.
DP World had earlier said that the Hyperloop can shrink inventory movement timescales dramatically, reducing finished goods inventory and cut required warehouse space and cost by 25 per cent.
In February 2018, chairman of Virgin Hyperloop One, Richard Branson had announced plans of a hyperloop system between Pune and Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra. Those plans have stalled due to coronavirus outbreak.
