This is Matt Matern, Unite and Heal America, my guest, Rob Miller, Chief Marketing Officer of Hyperloop. Excited to have Rob on the show, and tell us a little bit about what his company is doing and what the future looks like for the environmental movement and how this is going to integrate into systems that we have around the country. It’s, I think what Hyperloop seems to be up to is very futuristic. It’s, it’s exciting, and I’d love to hear more, and have our listeners hear more about this. Rob, welcome to the show.

Hi, Matt, it’s great to be here.

Well, Rob, tell us a little bit about how you came about it came came to coming to this country, company, and kind of your story, your journey of, of why you chose Hyperloop and, and why you believe so strongly in the company.

And I, you know, I spent about 10, 10-15 years basically traveling, I lived overseas, I lived in Asia for 10 years. And, and part of that I was on, you know, as I was, you know, commuting between country to country. So, I had literally, you know, traveling between place to place was was, in a sense, my job and you know, I love it, you know, that the commute on the bullet train in Japan and and ride the Maglev in Shanghai, you know, going by going by motorcycle in Vietnam and tooktook in Thailand.

So, traveling has always been really interesting. And for me, it was, you know, and especially in the past 20 years, we’ve seen so much innovation in the moving of bits and bytes, right, the things that are built into our phones today. But we still, you know, coming back to the states that, you know, we still haven’t seen innovation and the movement of people and goods.

So I moved back to Washington, DC and was commuting on, on Amtrak and, you know, I knew that innovation was always something that I’d been interested in. And I’d read, you know, Elon Musk’s Alpha paper on Hyperloop. And thought, and this is absolutely fascinating. I had met the founder, at South by Southwest back in 2015 2016. And been fortunate enough to join the company then.

So what is your background in terms of what do you what are the areas of expertise that that you bring to the company?

So, you know, I started off in neuroscience with the ambition of going to medical school, but then I started traveling and, you know, falling into international trade and marketing. And so that’s the kind of marketing and technology so that’s, that’s the kind of background that I that I’m bringing?

Okay. It gives the listeners if you would, a little bit of a sense of what Hyperloop does, and what projects it’s working on now.

Sure, I mean, so, you know, the basic idea of of Hyperloop, is it, you mentioned that it’s futuristic, but the reality is, you know, if I asked you to guess when the first Hyperloop were, or, you know, not called Hyperloop. But when the first hyper loops were being built, you’d probably be surprised, you know, in a sense that the first the precursor to Hyperloop was a pneumatic train system that was constructed underground in New York City in the 1860s. So we’ve been thinking about this.

Society has been thinking about this for a long time, the first patent in this area, it was a little over 100 years ago. All That technology exists, it’s just no one’s really put it together. And the basic concept is you’re traveling in a capsule, which is like a train in a tube, or you vacuum out the air and take out the friction of the tube, so that you can travel, almost almost frictionless. Getting getting airplane speeds on the ground and faster, and using a fraction of the energy at a fraction of the cost.

Well, that definitely does sound futuristic. So tell us a little bit about how you see us getting to that point and kind of the practicality of of creating those systems.

So, you know, getting to that point the the challenge for us and the challenge to getting because we’ve we’ve now been at this for since 2013. We started as a company we really got going 2014 In 2015, so we’ve been at this a number of years, the technology in a sense is the first generation, second generation technologies ready.

What takes a little bit of time is the is the regulations. So we’ve been working hard, we’ve been working hard to build the regulatory, what would become the regulatory processes in the United States in the European Union, and in different places around the world so that we can we can help bring Hyperloop to life?

So what, what is preventing? Or what is the hurdle that you see here in the US in terms of creating a hyperlink, say, in Los Angeles?

So I think, you know, we separate those those two for a second, I mean, creating creating a Hyperloop. In the US, we’ve been fortunate enough that where we and everyone in the industry is receiving support from the Department of Transportation, in a sense that the D us D O T has created a new, a new subgroup within the Department of Transportation, the N E TT, new and emerging transportation technologies. Hyperloop itself is now classified under the National Rail administration.

So that would mean it’s, you know, it, it’s kind of brought Hyperloop and other emergent transportations technologies meant more mainstream. So there is there is support, we’ve done a feasibility study, our first Hyperloop line would likely be in the Midwest, from Chicago, to Cleveland to Pittsburgh, it’s an ideal place for first Hyperloop the promise of bringing it to Los Angeles, where where you and I live, and and I guess most of us are listening from is it’s gonna take a little while. But the benefit would be that, you know, we’re LA to San Francisco in 30 minutes.

Well, that would be wonderful. I think all of us who have taken flights or driven up to San Francisco on many occasions, would be happy to do that trip in 30 minutes instead of six hours or seven hours driving. So would it would it use some of the technology that Elon Musk has worked on as far as the tunneling? Or would it be about an above ground system?

Yeah, I mean, you know, if you if you look at the been transportations essentially flow. And if you look at, if you look at flow throughout nature, one of the most efficient flow systems in the human body are red blood cells. And red blood cells move move efficiently because they move three dimensionally. So if you look at transportation today, and the problems with transportation, we’re on a two dimensional grid. So you know, any ability for us to take that into three dimensions, above ground at ground below ground, real really adds really adds to the potential take away the gridlock.

So the benefit was Hyperloop, is that you can build Hyperloop, there are benefits to building above ground. But if you’re in the city of Los Angeles, it’s really going to be really difficult and other cities around the world to build above ground new infrastructure systems. So tunneling becomes really important.

And the advantage of tunneling is one that kind of like technology continues to improve. And to with Hyperloop, it says it’s a smaller area for tunnels. So the cost is not as not as restrictive as building for, let’s say, high speed rail or, you know, other forms of transportation.

So tunneling is a is a big, boring, or tunneling is a big component to it. You know, Elon Musk and the Boring Company are working on proving those technologies we are as well. So I think that’ll be that’ll be a big, big component to Hyperloop being successful in the future.

So are there any governmental subsidies for this type of work? Or Where where are we at in terms of government’s involvement in, in helping this technology get off the ground?

I think that they they support is really been more building towards regulations and Hyperloop to date, are awesome. The other Hyperloop companies that have you know, it’s all been private dub and private investment. And, you know, to build this, it’s going to take a public public private partnership.

So we look forward to continuing to work with work with governments. No, we’re we’re strong proponents of of investments in research and in tech and research, R&D into innovation. And you know, Hyperloop is one of those innovations.

Well, everybody you’re listening to Unite and Heal America with my guest Rob Miller, Chief Marketing Officer of Hyperloop. We’ll be back in just one minute. You’re listening to KABC 790.

We’re back with Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern, KABC 790, my guest again, Rob Miller with Hyperloop. And, Rob, I want to talk to you about what are the energy savings from this technology? And why is it that it’s an important part of environmental strategy going forward?

Matt, thanks, I, you know, I think with the, you know, everything that’s happened over the past year, especially in the beginning, you know, last last March, last April, when you saw a substantial decrease in global movement. And we also saw things like LA having one of the cleanest areas in the United States, there were towns in India, that hadn’t seen the Himalayas for 30 years, that now has not had this beautiful view.

And I think we know, we’ve got the opportunity to see what the world might look like, if, you know, if we’re polluting a little less via transportation. Transportation is itself is directly responsible, the pollution from it from for 8 million deaths a year. And it’s the it’s the largest, largest growing emitter of carbon dioxide. So you know, and living in China for a number of years, and, you know, living in the middle of a polluted city, it has a tremendous impact on your health.

So now that we’ve, we’ve had this opportunity, I think it’s, it’s, you know, it’s important that when we’re thinking about how to build transportation systems for the future, that that’d be a major element of it. Not not, because not just because it’s, it’s good for the earth, but that it’s, you know, it’s good for our children.

You know, it’s just reducing pollution. So the benefit of Hyperloop is, is is there a few one is that, you know, Hyperloop itself uses uses significantly less energy in operation, because you’re essentially working from this, this friction, friction free, or nearly frictionless environment. So if you add, it’s a transportation system that’s mostly above ground. So if you add solar panels, take into account gains from kinetic energy.

And, and when you’ve had the opportunity to operate a system that’s using almost no energy or, you know, in in our case, the studies show that there’s a potential to to give energy back. So that while operating the Hyperloop system, you’re collecting as much energy as you use, or you’re actually collecting more energy than you’re using.

So I think the from a sustainability perspective, from a pollution perspective, there’s there a significant advantages to this type of technology. And you know, it is going to be technology, it’s going to help to build a cleaner future for us.

I was going to ask you, in terms of the cost, you were talking about your rollout from Chicago to Cleveland to Pittsburgh? And do you have a projected cost of of what that system is going to be?

Yeah, we we’ve we did a full fees for the first interstate feasibility study. That was in partnership in partnership with with public agencies. And, you know, the, the, the interesting thing is that, basically, every mass transportation system in the world relies on subsidies of some form, if they’re not profitable, outside of the Hong Kong Metro, which relies on revenue from real estate, every other mass transportation system in the world is not profitable.

So the LA Metro sent in a sense is, you know, we’re subsidizing every, every trip to an extent. And, you know, we’ve accepted that as a society. So the potential with Hyperloop were heavily like systems is that you have a system that is extremely efficient and can be profitable. So the study, the study from Cleveland, Chicago to Pittsburgh, showed that you can actually you can actually get back the money invested in as little as 15 to 20 years, which is which is unheard of in mass transportation.

So, then the question becomes not how much does it cost, but how soon can you can you make a profit from it? And the investors would wouldn’t, you know, wouldn’t necessarily be, it wouldn’t be on the backs of the taxpayers. You know, completely public investment, it would be a public private partnership, because then what you have is a profitable system and transportation.

And what percentage do you see coming from the public and what percentage coming from private individuals Some businesses.

Yeah, I think, uh, you know, it’s going to that, you know, we’re still left with a wait and see. And in a sense, it’s gonna change by, by area by state by country, that that kind of, because you have, if you look at rail systems around the world, there’s no, there’s no one rail operator. You know, a lot of these rail systems are nationalized, some are private. So, you know, it’s really going to vary place by place.

So in terms of dollars out of pocket, what is what is the rough cost of this system to roll out from Chicago to Pittsburgh? In I assume billions of dollars, it’s probably gotta be certainly reasonably expensive to have that sophisticated of a system implemented?

Yeah, you know, we’re looking at probably about two thirds of the cost of the high speed rail system, I think the estimates are somewhere between 20 to 40 million per mile. But, but again, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s the fact that you with the high speed rail, there’s not much potential for us for you to get that money back in, in profit, and revenue and profit.

And, and that’s not the case with Hyperloop. So it’s, it’s, you know, it’s significantly cheaper than high speed rail, and it’s, it’s potentially profitable.

Now, why is it so hard to build a high speed rail here in California? And why would a hyperlink be a better that for us?

Yeah, you know, I mean, and I’m, you know, traveling on the bullet train and understanding that this is technology that was built 60 years ago, Japan, I’m a fan of high speed rail. So, you know, I think that the challenge here in California is that, you know, we’re still talking about LA to San Francisco, two hours and, and 50 minutes.

There are a number of problems, and I think they’re, they’re well documented on, on, on why it’s, it’s so challenging. But, you know, Hyperloop, we’re talking about a fraction of the cost Hyperloop, we’re talking about, you know, much, much faster.

So, you know, it’s gonna take some time we’re building, we built a full scale system and Toluse where we’re operational, where we’ll be breaking ground next year on the first passenger system. So Hyperloop is happening, it’s just going to take a little bit of time to make it here in Los Angeles.

So in terms of what you’re doing in Toulouse, France, so what’s the what is the status of that project?

So we have you know, we Toulouse France is known as the aerospace capital of, of Europe. It’s, it’s the home of Airbus, and a number of other companies. A really great place for innovation. The aerospace engineering is is some of the best in Europe, which is why we chose chose to loose as a as a home for our prototype.

And essentially, what we have there is a 320 meter full scale prototype, so we’re talking about 14 foot tubes and 100 foot long capsule. And essentially, we’re integrating all of those components and and doing our testing there.

Okay, so where it will they have a, an actual line that is operational or just more of a prototype? situation.

So into Luiza doing, this is the end, this is the prototype. From here, we’re looking at Abu Dhabi as the first, it would be the first commercial line starts with three miles five kilometers. And from there, we would have the system certified and regulated from that regulation we can build, we can build full lines.

Okay, well, the Abu Dhabi project B and above ground system or a or some other variants.

It will it’s it’s completely flat, and there’s lots of there’s lots of space, so it makes it ideal, an ideal geography for for the first Hyperloop system.

So how soon will the Abu Dhabi project the operational

we’re looking about from from the start of construction from the start of construction. And, you know, there’s been a little bit of delay and uncertainty with with everything that’s happened with COVID looking about three years to from construction data operation. So some three, four years where we’re hoping to be to have passengers passengers riding in a Hyperloop

and who is who’s behind the funding of that? Is that the Abu Dhabi government or private investors?

It’s private investors.

Okay. And do you have an estimated cost of what is what’s going to be to build that system?

I don’t think we’ve disclosed that. But I think it’s at some some point in the future we can we can talk about the cost there.

Okay. Yeah, I’m always concerned. I think, just generally, there is a sense of the feasibility of different technologies. And I recognize that.

Back with the United States of America with Matt Matern, and Rob Miller, Chief Marketing Officer for Hyperloop. And Rob, I wanted to talk to you a bit about the structure of Hyperloop as a company, it’s, it’s kind of a fascinating way that your group operates.

And what you had told me is that there’s approximately about 5060 employees, and then you have 800 contributors who work for stock and other 50 partner companies that work with your company to help roll out this technology. Maybe you could describe that for us a little bit as that is a fairly, you know, unique model as compared to kind of a traditional corporate structure.

Yeah, it’s, it is a unique model. And, you know, we’re, we’re fortunate that the Harvard Business School has written two cases about us, the most recent one was just published recently, and we’ve been teaching classes in in Harvard this semester, and talking about how we work, essentially, if you wanted to start Mata Hyperloop company tomorrow, right, as a startup, you wouldn’t need you know, let’s say we’re starting in Los Angeles, we want to, we want to start a new Hyperloop company.

You know, if we’re doing a traditional way, we would need to find engineering in a number of different areas, just engineering alone, aerospace, aeronautics, nuclear physics, magnetic levitation, vacuum technology, and a half a dozen dozen others. So we would look for the best people available, some of the best people available are not some of the best people out there and not available, they’re working for some of the great companies we have in the region. NASA, Tesla, SpaceX, you know, number of others.

And so the cost already become so prohibitive, that it’s, it makes a project like Hyperloop, almost impossible, you need hundreds of millions of dollars to essentially eating get started. So, you know, what we realized is, there’s this there’s this cognitive surplus around the world of people that want to be involved in, in projects like this, who generally either have full time jobs or doing other things who can commit a little bit of time to, to Hyperloop, let’s say 10 hours a week.

So our founder, dark Alboran, had a NASA funded incubator who called jumpstart jumpstart fund, who, who, you know, essentially would gather this this crowd to, you know, a little bit like crowdsourcing the crowd to work on projects. And immediately after the the Alpha paper came out, they asked to, you know, they put a call to action to is Hyperloop, something that this this community wants to work on. And we received this overwhelming, yes.

We had a little over 100 engineers join. And these are people that did amazing things already, like, be part of the building of the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We even had someone who’s passed away since but when he was active on the Manhattan Project, so, you know, they did the initial feasibility for for what a Hyperloop is, what they came to was, it’s not exactly like the Alpha paper. A few few differences, but this is something that’s absolutely feasible.

So from there, we started a company essentially, you know, essentially a form of crowdsourcing, but there’s no volunteers in our company, everyone is, is renumerated be the equity via stock options. So, you know, we asked to, if anyone wants to be involved in the project, and they can make a contribution. You know, we’ll we’ll bring them on board, be a minimum of 10 hours a week. We’re equity. So, you know, since that we’ve, we’ve grown them into a little bit more of a traditional company and that we have 5060 employees around the world.

We Wwe have contractors, but we also have what we call contributors who are those are those that are helping us bring this to life, in exchange for equity. And what that’s allowed us to do is to really bring on some of the symptom, these amazing people who wouldn’t have time or wouldn’t be able to join us full time, but can make contributions in these in these areas to help them move the technology forward.

That is, that is fascinating. And it does seem like that could be the wave of the future, and that people may not work for just one company, they might work for four or five different companies that were 10, or whatever their bandwidth might allow them to work on.

So in terms of how do you how do you vet, the applicants who who might come to you and say, Hey, we’ve got we’ve got a contribution, we’d like to be a part of this team. How do you discern whether or not this person is a good fit for your team?

It’s a little bit it’s a radically different system to so if you were to join a Google, for example, their their interview processes, famously long, you’re gonna have seven 810 11 interviews, and then once you’re in, you’re in and trusted. So our process is a little bit different than that we’ll, you know, we’ll have you know, we do have a, you know, the, the initial hurdle is still still, you know, a little a little bit vague, and that, we want to make sure that, that you’re able to, they’re able to contribute that something you want to do, you’re able to add value.

And then but once you’re in, we start, usually we start on an initial project. And, you know, we see how that goes. And, you know, if you’re successful, then you kind of get if you think of it as a concentric circle, you know, peeling, peeling layers of the onion, it’s the same thing, essentially.

You know, the more you succeed, the closer you get to the core of the company, the benefit for for us has been, we’ve been able to find the, you know, the ones that are that are, you know, part of our core team are the employees are the ones that have succeeded in this in this model, who, you know, some of amazing resumes, some have, you know, resumes that you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t predict they would be successful.

But we’ve been able to build this amazing team, because they’re tested, in a sense. And, and it’s, it’s allowed us to, you know, we you’re able to weed out people that really aren’t interested in working pretty quickly, or aren’t able to contribute pretty quickly. And you have to find the kind of the true gems as well.

How did you come upon this model? Was this something that you were another company doing successfully? And then mimicked it? Or was it something that you kind of invented on your own?

This was this was our founder, dark owl born. And the the model, which we’re calling crowd powered, is something that he really, he really invented, but it was, you know, it’s adopted from this idea of, you know, of, of many contributing and, and the advances that we’ve had and communications, so that we have this this global community.

There’s this cognitive surplus, this people that want to be involved in passion projects, you know, we’re just, you know, we’re just one of the, you know, we’re one of those projects that are bringing people bringing people together. And I think, for us, it’s, it’s a, we’re not, we’re not perfect in this model, I think we’re still, you know, we’re still only at a percentage of, you know, percentage or maybe 30 40%, of what it could be, but we’re trying to learn every day and to and to be more efficient and effective.

Well, it does sound fascinating. I think that bringing in people from different parts of the world and different disciplines who have a passion for for the type of work that you’re doing, and, and giving them an opportunity to contribute, is I think it’s an important lesson for the business community to open up their doors to allow the divergent groups to be a part of the process and give them a chance to to contribute it’s, I think, could be transformative to our business community.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s, you know, for us and early on, I realized, you know, one of the first meetings we were with the propulsion and levitation team, talking about the gap. You know, the gap between the magnetic levitation system it’s a next generation magnetic levitation system. The gap between the track and the magnets and the shorter the gap, the greater the efficiency You know, one of our, you know, one of our contributors, Dr. David Dahl was, was, you know, it, we were talking about one of those one of those issues.

And he, he went up to the board and, and put a formula on the board and said, you know, the early 1990s, we were working on this, you know, we’re working on this to, it took us a month to solve this problem, here’s the solution. So that’s something that as a traditional company would be, would be incredibly challenging to, to, to utilize that knowledge. And those kinds of those kinds of small breakthroughs have never really been, you know, what’s, what’s helped the powered? What’s up the power, our success so far?

So we’re where do you see that kind of going for, for your firm? What’s the Quantum Leap going forward? That’s going to take you from prototype to initiating this on a on a global scale? Or, and how is that going to work? What’s what are your plans? What’s the design of the company to, to take that, that quantum leap?

So it’s a great question. It’s I mean, that, that I think every in every mid stage startup startup deals with it’s how do you how do you scale effectively, and, you know, for us, it’s, you know, it’s us, it’s not losing the power of the model, but building our building our core base, along with our best in class partners, right now we have, we have 50 partners, including, and in some in some investors, like Hitachi rail, who are, you know, we’re partnering with them on technology.

Your capsule development was one was one area where we had a strong partnership where we were told it would take, it would take 10 years and, and $400 million to build the first Hyperloop capsule, and a sense where, you know, we were able to do it in a fraction of the time, because we’re working with a company called artificial who, you know, essentially we’re, we’re helping to helping airlines like, like Airbus build better carbon fiber structures.

So they had that they had 60 years of institutional knowledge. And we’re able to see the airplane industry go from go from, you know, 5%, to 60%, composite, composite, composite material. And for us, we can start at 85 90% for the capsule, which makes it makes it lighter, which makes it stronger.

It’s kind of using that institutional thinking and starting fresh. So it’s strengthening our partner network, having these best in class partners, strengthening our contributor network and building our core team around the world.

Well, it’s a fascinating story, because I think it comes at from two different angles, you’ve got a technology company that is working on an environmental issue, and then doing it in a way that is not traditional in terms of using new models of business is, is a great story for, for all of us to look at, look at this problem differently, the environmental crisis that we’re in and changing kind of the conversation.

So it’s fascinating, I think we should be investigating this further. We’ve got the Chief Marketing Officer Rob Miller from Hyperloop. And you’re listening to Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern, on KABC 790. We’ll be back in just one minute.

Unite and Heal America with Matt Matern, and my guest, again, Rob Miller from Hyperloop. We’re talking about advances of technology and helping our environment be cleaner and greener going into the 21st century.

Rob, just want to go back to something we talked about earlier, which is how the Department of Transportation is working with you and other high tech companies. Have you seen a shift in since January with the new administration? Or were you working with the Department of Transportation prior to that and rolling out this technology?

Essentially, you know, we what we’ve seen from Highcliffe is really, truly bipartisan support. So we were working with the child administration and there was a lot of great developments in the Department of Transportation, the formation of a net Council this new and emerging transportation, the classification of Hyperloop as under the UN National Rail Authority and we look forward to we look forward to working with the Buda judge administration in the in the Department of Transportation. And, you know, we feel that, that the the focus on on clean energy transportation is really a fantastic thing both both here in the US and in Europe as well.

How about in Japan, where they have the Maglev trains? Are they looking at using this technology? Because obviously, they were an early adopter. And in getting the highest speed rail systems.

Yeah, there’s, you know, having spent a lot of years living and, and traveling in Japan, you know, fairly good connections, they’re the, you know, they’re building a first maglev bullet train, which I think will be completed in the next few years. So there’s, there’s some advances, there’s a lot of interest in the technology, I think there’s a cautious approach to, to building so there will be a lot of research with the one thing with the the safety record of the bullet train and almost six years operation without a single fatality.

So, you know, the Japanese are doing something right there. And we, you know, we anticipate that Japan will be, you know, will be one of the places that eventually will incorporate something like a Hyperloop. But, you know, we’ll do it on Japanese terms.

One term terms of you, you partnering with Hitachi rail, I just thought that’s a Japanese company, and what’s, what’s the connection there? And how do they see their partnership with you rolling out in the years to come.

We’ve we announced this, this partnership and investment from Hitachi rail and, and for us, it was a you know, in for us and for the industry, it’s a signal that you have these, these transportation companies that some of you as legacy transportation companies, but are actually very innovative. Now investing in and thinking about and providing technologies for Hyperloop.

So this initial partnership will be signaling communication, which is one of the areas where they’re best in class for Hitachi rail, we’re working together on on building that signalling communications for for Hyperloop TT. So it’s a it’s a it’s a pretty exciting time for us. And it’s exciting partnership, we think that only grow?

Well, I guess, it’s that question of when your technology becomes inevitable. And as opposed to just a science project type dream versus this is an inevitability that we will move in that direction. And have you have you crossed that divide from science project to inevitability.

And I know some of the there’s probably some skepticism for some of the listeners here. But we’re with Hyperloop, it’s not a matter of if anymore. It’s really a matter of when. And, you know, we’ve seen, you know, especially the past one, two years, this is something where, you know, in that, you know, people have doubted from the beginning, but we keep making progress.

And now we’re seeing it, we’re seeing mainstream players come into the Hyperloop industry, we’re seeing governments preparing for the build, we’re seeing governments like Japan and Korea and Russia, you know, developing the technologies as well. So it’s, it’s not a matter of if it’s only a matter of when, and the matter when is we’re not decades away, where we’re at the point where we’re years away from our

well, how is Russia and Korea and Japan? How are they approaching it? And are they competitors of yours? And, you know, are these competitors helping you because they’re also driving innovation? And in shifting the way the world thinks about these technologies?

I think there’s a there’s a lot of opportunity for for cooperation. So in a sense, we, you know, we would likely be a technology provider. There was a consortium and an agreement in South Korea. You know, we’ve, we’ve had extensive talks with the Chinese government, the Chinese government is working on the technology as well. So we, you know, they they’ve, they consider this a strategic technology for China.

So we look forward to advancing those conversations and being a technology provider for those places around the world. So in some places, you know, the systems wouldn’t be built by us it would be built by probably the Chinese government or a Chinese firm, but we would, you know, in a sense, start A joint venture to, for us, it’s really about, you know, man, how can we bring this to life?

I mean, this is, you know, where we’re fans, we’re advocates, we, you know, we want to, to wake up in the morning and build a better future. So, you know, in the end, our goal was really to, to bring this next breakthrough in transportation to life, and we’re just fighting to do it.

Well, it is an exciting adventure. And I guess I, you know, turning to a little bit of the politics of this, when you mentioned, it being a strategic technology, and I can see that and the Chinese government has a history of wanting American companies and any foreign company that does business in China to do a transfer of technology to the government.

And, you know, I guess I’m a little suspicious of that, and have been critical publicly of the Chinese government’s attempts to or more than attempts, actually has pressured and coerced American companies to transfer their technologies as part of doing business in China. And I guess, I’m still skeptical of that. I, I wonder how your firm is looking at that, and how it would safeguard its intellectual property when doing business with the in China?

Yeah, I mean, with absolutely with with good reason, I, you know, I was living in Shanghai, when the they finished constructing the Maglev in the Maglev was essentially built by, by German technology, the rest of high speed rail in China was built by was bought by Chinese firms. So, you know, there, there are a lot of lessons to draw on there.

For us, you know, protecting our intellectual property, you know, rip your intellectual property is absolutely critical. So we’re, you know, we’ve, we’ve essentially, you know, try to try to take the lessons of the past and, and, and learn and apply them.

So how, you know, I guess it’s a, it’s a pretty technologically challenging area, and I don’t pretend to be a tech expert, but have some, some passing knowledge of intellectual property law and curious as to how does one partner up with the Chinese government and still maintain one’s integrity in terms of just keeping that that technology is secure?

Yeah, it’s, you know, something that we, you know, we haven’t rushed to show it to form a joint venture. And we haven’t rushed to a partnership, because we want to make sure we get it right. So it’s something we’re we’re still working on and something we want to make sure we we get right.

How about other governments turning a little bit closer to home in California? Do you see any assistance from state governments? And in rolling out this technology? Are they still kind of sitting on the fence waiting to see how effective it is? And in the prototype stage?

Yeah, I think I mean, that’s, that’s going to come we’re not quite there yet. You know, once we build the, you know, once we build this, this commercial, this first commercial system, and we have regulations in place, and we’re, we’re moving passengers from one place to another, then I think it becomes much, you know, becomes a much safer bet. You know, in a sense that, but but this is happening, and it’s just, it’s really just a matter of time.

Well, it’s a it’s a fascinating project, as I as somebody has a bit of an entrepreneurial mind, I appreciate and applaud your efforts. Starting with the company is employee number two, and now you’ve grown to 50 plus employees and, and hundreds of different contractors who and contributors or work with you and 50 partner companies is an impressive record of showing that this technology does have some degree of feasibility and you’re rolling it out and making it happen.

So that is, that’s amazing work and we are certainly be watching you going forward. Anything in particular that our listeners should be on the lookout for. If they have an interest in contributing to work with your company, what would they do?

Now just just take a look out for I mean, you can go to our website at Hyperlooptt.com. To learn more and then you know, we’re on all the social medias and uh, you know, I, you know, we’re always in need of advocates and expertise. So, you know, feel free to visit us there or, you know, anyone could reach out to me directly as well.

That’s great. Well, again, thank you so much, Rob, for being on the show. Chief Marketing Officer of Hyperloop. You’ve been listening to KABC 790 with Unite and Heal America. This is Matt matter. And we’ll look forward to our show next week and hope Hopefully, everybody can join us.

It’s been a fascinating conversation with Rob talking about how this this new technology could change the way we travel between ces cities across the country and, and across the world saving energy and saving time. It’s a it’s kind of futuristic, so we’re looking forward to seeing your company succeed going forward and and maybe talking to you in the in the months to come.

So thanks, Matt. It’s been a pleasure.