????今年8月，Hyperloop 交通技術(shù)公司宣布與歐瑞康萊寶真空公司和工程設(shè)計(jì)公司Aecom正式建立合作關(guān)系。人們普遍認(rèn)為，這兩家實(shí)力雄厚的上市公司的加入，意味著特斯拉公司創(chuàng)始人埃隆·穆斯克在2013年8月向全世界公布的白皮書中闡述的創(chuàng)意得到了認(rèn)可。

????還有其他跡象表明Hyperloop項(xiàng)目正在推進(jìn)：為了配合將于2016年1月舉辦的座艙設(shè)計(jì)大賽，穆斯克自己的SpaceX公司正在建立測(cè)試軌道。Hyperloop 交通技術(shù)公司（目前不直接屬于穆斯克名下）也在加利福尼亞州建立另外的測(cè)試軌道。

????并非所有人都在歡呼雀躍。自穆斯克的白皮書發(fā)布以來，媒體，尤其是科技媒體，就對(duì)Hyperloop的概念激動(dòng)不已。然而，對(duì)于這個(gè)創(chuàng)意，無論是它的整體思路還是具體細(xì)節(jié)，一直保持密切關(guān)注的觀察家和運(yùn)輸業(yè)專家都不感冒。他們認(rèn)為，即便考慮到Hyperloop白皮書已經(jīng)給出了大致的框架，但這項(xiàng)計(jì)劃最重要的部分，即速度和造價(jià)，都有很大的水分。

????Hyperloop的批評(píng)者之一，瑞典皇家理工學(xué)院理論數(shù)學(xué)研究員艾倫·列維常在Pedestrian Observations博客上分析公共交通問題。Hyperloop的概念剛一發(fā)布，列維就指出它存在的種種問題，其中一條是Hyperloop的加速度會(huì)讓乘客嘔吐。

????新合作伙伴的到來也沒有讓列維改變觀點(diǎn)。他現(xiàn)在更擔(dān)心的是，Hyperloop可能會(huì)導(dǎo)致政府不再那么支持往返于洛杉磯和舊金山之間的加州高鐵計(jì)劃。

????列維表示：“我認(rèn)為Hyperloop減少了某些地區(qū)間高鐵的政策支持力度，例如硅谷那些科技群落之間的線路?！?/p>

????實(shí)際上，穆斯克對(duì)加州高鐵計(jì)劃的敵意已是盡人皆知。他在Hyperloop白皮書的開頭幾段中抨擊了“加州‘高速’鐵路”（使用了充滿懷疑的引號(hào)），并把其描述為“全球最昂貴也最慢的鐵路”。他并不是唯一對(duì)加州高鐵失望的人，知名鐵路史學(xué)家理查德·懷特就認(rèn)為，加州高鐵將成為“交通運(yùn)輸界的越南”，在未來幾十年中浪費(fèi)大量財(cái)力。

????如果Hyperloop在概念上果真存在缺陷，它最終可能會(huì)從更可行的交通項(xiàng)目手里搶走大量人力、物力和財(cái)力。

????一個(gè)遭人非難的事實(shí)是，Hyperloop的成本被極大低估了。白皮書預(yù)計(jì)從洛杉磯到舊金山的Hyperloop項(xiàng)目?jī)H需耗費(fèi)60億美元，讓加州高鐵的600億美元（還在繼續(xù)提高）的報(bào)價(jià)相形見絀。不過即便認(rèn)可了白皮書中的假設(shè)，這份非常粗略的估算也沒有包含跨越舊金山灣區(qū)的成本——這一項(xiàng)很容易就會(huì)花去數(shù)十億美元。此外，所謂的洛杉磯的終點(diǎn)站其實(shí)也不會(huì)設(shè)在市內(nèi)。所以白皮書描述的成本只是線路中最便宜的中央山谷那一段所需的資金。

????Hyperloop能否大規(guī)模地解決交通運(yùn)輸問題，也存在著很大疑問。根據(jù)最初計(jì)劃的構(gòu)想，座艙每30秒出發(fā)一次，這個(gè)時(shí)間差也是各座艙的間距。不過鑒于座艙的最高速度可達(dá)每小時(shí)760英里，它們至少需要70秒的減速時(shí)間。為了避免座艙連環(huán)相撞，造成災(zāi)難性后果，實(shí)際運(yùn)行時(shí)的發(fā)車距離至少需要翻倍，而乘客數(shù)量也得減半。這就意味著Hyperloop的載客量只有高鐵的10%。

????當(dāng)然，穆斯克的雄心令人鼓舞，他在追求偉大理想的道路上也取得了相當(dāng)?shù)某晒?。不過還有一個(gè)決定性的理由讓人們產(chǎn)生疑慮，它無關(guān)Hyperloop的技術(shù)細(xì)節(jié)，而在于其空想般的計(jì)劃背后的動(dòng)機(jī)：它甚至都不是穆斯克自己的創(chuàng)意。

????在公布最初白皮書之前的幾周，穆斯克會(huì)見了ET3公司的領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者達(dá)里爾·奧斯特。這是一家在真空管道運(yùn)輸方面擁有超過十年研究經(jīng)驗(yàn)的公司。奧斯特對(duì)《快公司》雜志暗示稱，穆斯克實(shí)際上是獲得了他的技術(shù)許可。

????ET3擁有類似Hyperloop的計(jì)劃，但是多年來沒有得到樂觀的評(píng)價(jià)，反而遭受懷疑。Hyperloop受到的待遇如此不同，證明它的吸引力恐怕很少來源于無可動(dòng)搖的事實(shí)或偉大的創(chuàng)意，更多是因?yàn)榘Ｂ　つ滤箍说膫€(gè)人信徒日漸增多，以及硅谷的超級(jí)英雄光環(huán)所致。新加入的兩大公司只愿意投入極為有限的資源（歐瑞康只分配了六個(gè)人）這一事實(shí)，也證明了這一點(diǎn)。（財(cái)富中文網(wǎng)）

????譯者：嚴(yán)匡正

????審校：任文科

????In late August, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) announced co-development deals with Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum and the engineering design firm Aecom. The involvement of two established and publicly-traded companies was widely interpreted as validation of the idea that Tesla founder Elon Musk shared with the world in a whitepaper in August of 2013.

????And there are other signs of forward motion on the Hyperloop: Musk himself is building a test track, through SpaceX, for a pod design contest slated for January of 2016. And HTT (which is not directly affiliated with Musk) is building a separate test trackin California.

????But not everyone’s jumping on board. The media, and especially the tech media, have been aflutter about the Hyperloop since that first paper. But close observers and transit industry vets are much less enthusiastic about the concept, from the big picture down to the nuts and bolts. They argue that even given that the Hyperloop whitepaper was a rough sketch, the most important elements of the plan—its speed and price—have been vastly oversold.

????One of the Hyperloop’s critics is Alon Levy, a researcher in theoretical mathematics with Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, who analyzes public transit issues at the blog Pedestrian Observations . When the Hyperloop was first announced, Levy highlighted conceptual problems, including that Hyperloop’s acceleration would make it a “barf ride”.

????The new partnerships haven’t changed his perspective. If anything, they’ve made him more worried about the Hyperloop’s potential to erode support for California’s high speed rail project (CHSR) between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

????“I think that [Hyperloop is] reducing political support for high speed rail in certain communities, like among very techy booster types in Silicon Valley,” says Levy.

????Musk has in fact been openly hostile to CHSR, and devoted the first substantive paragraphs of the Hyperloop whitepaper to a swipe at “California ‘high speed’ rail” (complete with skeptical scare quotes), which he described as “one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world.” Musk isn’t alone in his frustrations—eminent railroad historian Richard White has suggested that CHSR could become a “Vietnam of transportation”.

????And if the Hyperloop is conceptually flawed, it could end up drawing a lot of energy and support from more grounded transportation projects.

????One eyebrow-raising fact is that the Hyperloop’s costs have been wildly understated. The whitepaper’s $6 billion projected cost for a Hyperloop from L.A. to San Francisco would seem to put to shame CHSR’s $60 billion (and moving upwards) price tag. But even accepting the whitepaper’s assumptions, that very rough estimate doesn’t include costs for crossing San Francisco Bay—easily several billion dollars—and the L.A. terminus wouldn’t actually be in L.A. So the stated costs are only for the very least expensive span, in the Central Valley.

????There are also big reasons to doubt that the Hyperloop could ever be a transportation solution on the necessary scale. The initial plan was for pods to depart every thirty seconds, which would also be the follow distance between capsules. But the deceleration time for a pod travelling at up to 760 mph would be at least 70 seconds. To avoid a pileup in the case of one pod’s catastrophic failure, follow distances would need to be more than doubled—and passenger volume halved. That means the Hyperloop could carry only around 10% as many people as high speed rail.

????Of course, ambition is inspirational, and Elon Musk has been pretty successful pursuing huge ideas. But there’s a final reason to be skeptical, not just of the technical details of the Hyperloop, but of the supposedly utopian motives behind it: It may not even be Musk’s idea.

????Just a few weeks before dropping the original whitepaper, Musk met with Daryl Oster, the head of ET3—a company that has been developing Evacuated Tube Transport for more than a decade. Oster hinted to Fast Company that Musk had actually licensed the technology from him.

????ET3’s Hyperloop-like concept spent years being met not with elation, but skepticism. The fact that the Hyperloop’s reception has been so different suggests that its appeal may hinge far less on hard facts, or even big dreams, than on Elon Musk’s own growing cult of (awkward im)personality and aura of Silicon Valley superheroics. The willingness of two big companies to devote pretty limited resources to the project (Oerlikon is assigning six people) doesn’t change that math.