Hyperloop startup Arrivo is shutting down as workers are laid off
theverge.com
theverge.com
"(Arrivo)... started by former SpaceX engineer Brogan BamBrogan, who was a co-founder of Hyperloop One."
"Two of BamBrogan’s fellow co-founders had resigned..."
"One of the co-founders ... left in October, came to Arrivo from construction firm AECOM’s venture wing.
Jadon Smith, a fellow SpaceX veteran who has also worked for Lockheed Martin and the CIA, left shortly after, ..."
***"Arrivo was born from of the ashes of BamBrogan’s relationship with Hyperloop One.
The co-founder was ousted from Hyperloop One in the summer of 2016 after a clash
with fellow co-founder Shervin Pishevar, his brother Afshin Pishevar (who was chief legal officer), CEO Rob Lloyd,
and the startup’s board of directors."
"...that a member of the company’s leadership brought an axe into the office, displayed it,
and also used it to punch holes into a wall.
That person was BamBrogan,..."
Except this time, trouble is in charge.
For example, from an article in Wired [1]:
> The lawsuit against Hyperloop One includes a security camera image of a man, apparently Afshin Pishevar, holding rope and walking through the office. BamBrogan allegedly found a noose on his desk after complaining about company operations.
The axe is the only thing that seems weird, everything else you quoted can easily be explained by the fact that they'd failed to secure more funding and had to shut down even though they didn't want to. Many of us on Hacker News have no doubt experienced this kind of situation first hand.
Also I should mention that although Arrivo was started by ex-Hyperloop One people they were definitely not doing a hyperloop system.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/07/hyperloop-lawsuit-brogan-bambr...
But axes and nooses are not normal. What kind of passive-aggressive childish behavior is this? How about sitting down and talk business like adults, state and TALK about each person's perspective of things, and not go psycho? Ousting maybe normal, but if things were normal, the usual news wouldn't be "ousted" - the worse language is usually "parted ways with disagreement".
The guy definitely seems flamboyant, but that's not the same as unstable. I mean he might be unstable too, but I don't think one can draw that conclusion from the reporting.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-arriv...
Which is extremely expensive because it has to withstand huge forces trying to crush it like a an empty coke can..
Hyperloop is neighter "cheap" or "easy" to create. Its approx. 10 times as expensive to operate than "Mad-Lev" trains and 100000x as deadly if something goes wrong.
Malfunction in electric train means that it has to stop.
Malfunction in Hyperloop means all passangers are dead.
---
Watch Thunderf00t rant about hyperloop and read his sources. This project is nothing more than a scam to fetch investors money.
Is this across the board? I'd imagine the cost estimates would differ depending on where the line would be located - on raised platforms, below ground, or at ground level e.g. a highway divider lane? Or is Hyperloop impractical for pretty much all of the use cases?
I'm unaware of Musk asking for any particular investment in a Hyperloop project. Most Hyperloop projects are independent parties working on the idea on their own volition. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
That is until Elon can proof he can manufacture the Tube much cheaper than layering the Mag-Lev track.
IIRC his field is chemistry, yet he explained the batteries vs fuel problem in a wilfully ignorant way.
In practice it is so much more complicated. You have different soils, some that are water permeable - in Boston (I think) they solved that by literally freezing the ground. Does that sound cheap?
Then you have issues going under buildings (which you always are - otherwise why bother tunnelling?). All tunnelling disturbs the ground. When they built the Jubilee line extension under the houses of parliament they had to monitor how far Big Ben started leaning, and do something call "compensation grouting" to tip it back upright (basically you drill horizontal holes under it and pump concrete under it).
Tunnelling is just expensive. That's why it only happens where the alternative - building on land is very expensive.
But the thing is that electrified rail networks doesn't address the quadratically increasing losses from drag at high speeds. There's a reason you don't see railroads operating at airline speeds: drag at sea level is a killer. In fact, at high enough speeds, the energy of air travel is actually LOWER than that of a sea level train.\
Altitude gives you a lot of efficiency. The idea of the vacuum train is to bring that efficiency down to sea level. And I think it's a good idea, but a real engineering challenge. In principle, you can keep a vacuum pretty easily. Vacuum tubes remain sealed and evacuated for decades without energy consumption, for instance.
It's just at the interfaces you have to worry about leakage, and there it's a matter of careful sealing. It's possible to get really good at it. The International Space Station is full of interfaces (and thermal cycling every 90 minutes) and would quickly run out of air if we didn't know how to maintain a vacuum well at interfaces.
Yes. Apparently when jet turbines came along they were discounted as ever being useful for commercial/passenger airplanes because they were so incredibly inefficient. I mean, really incredibly inefficient.
What they didn't take into account is that the turbines allow you to fly at much, much higher altitudes. The reduced drag there more than makes up for the lower efficiency. And gets you a smoother ride and higher speeds as well.
Modern turbofan engines are much more efficient, but that's basically because they really are turbo-props with enclosed propellers, though we call them "high bypass turbofans".
And of course if jets have to drop to a lower altitude, for example because their cabin has become depressurised, range is drastically reduced.
If want to go 1000km in 3-4 hrs then you are the kind of problem hyperloop might solve.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing–Shanghai_high-speed_...
Keeping a vacuum over a length of hundreds of km is pretty hard, and in fact, has never been done.
High vacuum like the LHC would be hard, but that’s vast overkill. Even the equivalent of just 100,000 feet would be enough for super sonic trains.
The LHC however deals with high vacuume becase they need particles to travel hundreds of miles without encountering any atmospheric particles. That would let trains reach orbital velocity without issue, but would be horrifically expensive.
Basicly 100% to 1% vacuume is considered rough/coarse and it cheap. 1% to 1 micron is the middle ground which is increasingly difficult but still not that bad. Under 1 micron aka High vacuume is expensive and mostly the realm of science experiments.
https://www.hydraulicspneumatics.com/200/TechZone/Vacuum/Art...
Commercial aircraft fly at ~30,000 feet which is ~30% atm vs ~1% atm at 100,000 feet. That’s edge of space territory, but sill a long way from LHC style vacuums.
https://www.avs.org/AVS/files/c7/c7edaedb-95b2-438f-adfb-36d...
PS: In terms of force it makes little difference as you go to ever lower fractions, but it’s much harder to maintain and pump down the pressure as you keep going lower.
Really, nobody is going to build a system where this is a significant issue past the design stage. So, IMO it’s a consideration but a non issue.
No. There is no way that a similarly capable system will be remotely close in price to conventional rail. Musk's estimates were wildly optimistic at best, and the system he proposed would have a small fraction of the capacity of HSR, for example.
The advantage of a vacuum train (let's not pretend it is Musk's invention) is top speed. In some scenarios, this may be worthwhile, but it's natural comparison would be short haul flights, not passenger rail.
The problem isn't keeping the vacuum, it's making the whole thing safe and relatively cheap at the same time.
It seems like it's almost impossible to do that above ground with thermal expansion issues and very easy terrorism. But doing it in a tunnel solves some problems. The evacuation is still a big problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N17tEW_WEU
(note that the hyperloop will be a significantly higher vacuum. There would actually be little point in depressurizing a pipe to the level shown in the video. I hear this was done on mythbusters as well)
I think you'll agree after seeing the video: attempts to let people get out of that ... there's just no point. They'll be folded into an accordion before you can say cappuccino. Literally. Failures will propagate along such a pipe at close to the speed of sound. You wouldn't get through the first "c" of cappuccino.
You should restate the problem: the problem is the same as with trailer vs car crashes: pulling the various flattened and crushed together pieces of different people apart in a way that you'd be reasonably certain the right liter of goop recovered goes into the right casket, ideally with as little pieces of the pipe in there with them as possible.
An extra issue is that every way you might recover also fails given the forces involved. Let's say you let air in ? Well that's going to form a wall of air that'll hit with a speed, force and acceleration that is guaranteed to kill every passenger, just from the acceleration. More likely that too will fold them into an accordion.
This problem is like attempting to keep a plane intact during a crash. It can't be done, and even if you should succeed, there's no point: everyone inside will be dead from the acceleration.
This wasn't a "hyperloop" at all. It was a private freeway toll lane scheme with self-driving in the toll lane. Like CALTRANS demonstrated with Demo 97 back in 1997.[2] They had self-driving in dedicated lanes working back then.
[1] https://www.arrivo-loop.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlZEeIC_2lI
> In 1991, the United States Congress passed the ISTEA Transportation Authorization bill, which instructed USDOT to "demonstrate an automated vehicle and highway system by 1997." The Federal Highway Administration took on this task, first with a series of Precursor Systems Analyses and then by establishing the National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC). This cost-shared project was led by FHWA and General Motors, with Caltrans, Delco, Parsons Brinkerhoff, Bechtel, UC-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, and Lockheed Martin as additional partners. Extensive systems engineering work and research culminated in Demo '97 on I-15 in San Diego, California, in which about 20 automated vehicles, including cars, buses, and trucks, were demonstrated to thousands of onlookers, attracting extensive media coverage. The demonstrations involved close-headway platooning intended to operate in segregated traffic, as well as "free agent" vehicles intended to operate in mixed traffic. Other carmakers were invited to demonstrate their systems, such that Toyota and Honda also participated. While the subsequent aim was to produce a system design to aid commercialization, the program was cancelled in the late 1990s due to tightening research budgets at USDOT. Overall funding for the program was in the range of $90 million. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_self-driving_cars)
7 years later there was the first DARPA Grand Challenge, where no cars completed successfully. There's a great episode of startup podcast with interviews of the original competitors: https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/grand-challenge-season-6....
It's interesting to wonder whether and how much farther we'd be with self driving cars and computer vision in general if the government had continued to put its resources behind this project.
What a rotten way to tell an employee that they just lost their job!
Believe it or not, some people care whether they were thought of as a person or just a “human resource” on a spreadsheet.
The first point is that it wastes everybody's time. This also applies when a recruiter letting us know the interview result. The recruiters love to make us feel like we are human. I actually feel the opposite.
When a recruiter wanted to let me know the interview result, they would send an email to schedule a call. Then, the call would have to happen in the next few days instead. This occurred during the time I was interviewing with 7 companies and trying to juggling deadlines and offers. Just fcking tell me the result.
Another point is that this kind of attitude doesn't account for "diversity" of preferences. I admit that different people would want prefer different things. But why do we default to the way that wastes the most time? Just send an email that I am fired and offer to schedule a time to talk. If I want to talk, I'll schedule the time.
Please don't see me as a "human resource". But, more importantly, please do NOT waste my time.
I would rather not have the Face to Face conversation, I would rather not have to drive all way into the office just for them to tell me I no longer have a job, I would rather save that time.
Of course I also view employment different than most people as I do not have an attachment to it, I trade my labor for money, that is all. I do not have personal effects in my office, nor do I intermingle personal things with work things (i.e having personal emails sent to my work address, or signing up for personal accounts with my work address, or using work computers to store personal files)
If I am let go this week, I have ample savings to carry me until my next job, and I have nothing at the office I need or want to retrieve.
I was looking for a job when I found my current job, and if they no longer desire my labor some other company will.
Send me a email detailing any Severance Package, and any other details, and save me the trouble and awkwardness of having to talk to you in person.... Of course Introverted personality with almost no emotions
I know that people like you exist and understand your position. However, people running companies should use an approach that works for the lowest common denominator. People like you are somewhat rare.
Data needed.
I think you're implying the less orthodox scenario and the burden of proof is on you.
> people running companies should use an approach that works for the lowest common denominator.
No. They should use the best approach for that particular person. If they don't know what that is then IMO a respectful e-mail is the best way.
I also attempt to make myself very marketable by being a generalist instead of specializing in any one area, I have a wide range of skills that can be applied to a large number of industries.
I also live a somewhat minimalist life style so if needed I could massively downsize my expenses, currently my "Must have to live" expenses total about 60% of my income (and that is high because in the last year I acquired some new assets normally I run less than 50%) , that is my mortgage, utilities, auto expenses, food, etc. I could in theory take a 35% pay cut, it would impact my ability to save for retirement, and my hobbies but not my everyday life.
I think most people could have that level of security as well, with proper budgeting and self control, most people however want the nicest home that they pay 5-10x their annual salary for (my home is under 2x my annual salary), most want the fancy new car, I drive a reasonable used car cheap to maintain, and insure. I do not eat out often, I grow some of my own food, in fact for 2019 my goal is to get down to a food budget of less than $7 per day, I am much higher than that right now.
the point is, having a rainy day fund for job loss should be a higher priority than it is for people, i wish I would have learned that less in my 20's instead of in my mid 30's it would have saved me lost of pain.
Anything less than 6mos of expenses should be alarming to people. 3mos being the absolute bare minimum, and should be kept in a high yield cash savings account.
3:07 - guy in the cube next to me said "wtf, my email to you just bounced back?"
3:09 someone came with a box to escort me out of the building.
3:19 main client calls me on my mobile asking why emails to me are bouncing. i was the only contact and worker on the client's project. HR person wanted me out so bad they just cut me off without transitioning the client services to someone else.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-arriv...
Maybe in hindsight I'll be eating my words when they figure out how to actually build these hyper loops and we will all be traveling really fast with them, but I'm a bit more skeptical than that, and a good solution seems to exist already.
A major part of the infrastructure needed, land, is the same. So it's not inconceivable to convert between the two.
People would have similar concerns about the visual pollution of Hyperloop vs fencing, and auditory pollution can be solved by correctly maintained sound barriers (even trees!).
Those aren't exactly 100% effective through lack of maintenance, stupidity, or just plain malice. Plus, train tracks need snow removal. A closed system is a big win for weather.
A Hyperloop solves NONE of these. In fact it would intensify almost all of them.
One thing that’s not a problem with rail transport today: Max Speed.
It seems that anyone who would fund this kind of garbage talk might have more money than sense.
Slightly off topic: I am seeing a lot more "Startup" having difficulties getting funding than usual. What is happening to VCs and Silicon Valley?
I think it’s unrealistic to expect Musk to invest in any hyperloop startup without considering the timing and the team involved.
That's how you want to do it, and that's how everyone with the level of net worth of Musk does it. You don't think, for example, Zuckerberg, sells his FB shares everytime he buys a house in Hawaii.
The exception is now The Boring Company, which long-term is going to try doing Hyperloop.
That said, there was some talk about Musk looking into Hyperloop himself in the context of one of the Boring companys projects, so we will see.
For one, Elon Musk has a tendency of overextending himself. Right now he's the CEO of at least three companies. Maybe that makes it even a better question why he didn't look into building this himself.
The Hyperloop tubes could run underground, and if there is some sort of revolution in the cost-efficiency of tunnel boring, that would make it an even better option. Which is probably one of the reasons that Elon Musk founded The Boring Company.
Also, Hyperloop was floated as an alternative to the California high speed rail project--partly out of frustration that the California high speed rail line would be both the most expensive high speed rail line in the world and the lowest speed high speed rail line in the world, but also partly because Elon Musk owns a car company and has a vested interest in discouraging future investment in other forms of transportation. What's the best way to torpedo public support for building rail right here and now? Promising something even better, that no one will actually fund and build because it's a huge unknown.
The thing about Tesla is that Tesla's success relies upon long term growth and success, and the biggest risk to that strategy is a long-term decline in car ownership and usage. And Musk is famously defensive about Tesla.
Most of Musk's wild flights of fancy, if they do succeed, go through multiple stages of revision before an actual product emerges. With Hyperloop, Musk basically dumped the first draft of one of his flights of fancy on the world and said, "I'm too busy building electric cars and going to Mars to do this myself". And that's perfectly fair by itself!
But the first stage of revision for Musk tends to be taking an obvious, cost-effective if not profitable first step. Launching satellites and resupplying ISS was the obvious first step to going to Mars, and licensing a Lotus roadster body and building an electric supercar with it was the obvious first step to electrifying the automobile industry. Maybe Musk thinks The Boring Company is a good first step towards building Hyperloop.