This is really cool. For people just tuning in: this is a test of pods in a vacuum tube travelling by their own power. Designed by students. A pod just got 94km/hr top speed.
It wouldn't make for much of a competition if the SpaceX vehicle was the one doing all the work.
Why is that impressive?
> Just as aircraft climb to high altitudes to travel through less dense air, Hyperloop encloses the capsules in a reduced pressure tube. The pressure of air in Hyperloop is about 1/6 the pressure of the atmosphere on Mars. This is an operating pressure of 100 Pascals, which reduces the drag force of the air by 1,000 times relative to sea level conditions and would be equivalent to flying above 150,000 feet altitude. A hard vacuum is avoided as vacuums are expensive and difficult to maintain compared with low pressure solutions.
100 Pascals in a lab would be considered a 'medium' vacuum. And in a tube the size of an actual full-size hyperloop, even that will probably be extremely difficult and expensive to achieve.
I think the hyperloop will end up being technologically unviable mostly because of the cost and the limitations of technology (like the expansion joints that will be required on a decently long track), but I hope I'm wrong on that. It may lead to new innovations which will be good.
[0]: http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf (p3)
94km/h is a first step towards 1200km/h.