Gurit supports Swiss Hyperloop team
Wattwil SG – Composite specialist Gurit is sponsoring the Hyerloop team of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. This is developing a transport pod for the innovative transport system Hyperloop.
Hyperloop is project launched by Elon Musk and his startup SpaceX. He envisages a system that can transport pods with a top speed of 1,200km per hour through a vacuum tube. SpaceX initiated a global competition to inspire the development of these transport pods. Students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) were among the entrants. The EPFLoop raced to a third-place finish, competing against 18 teams from around the world. In the next stage of the competition, the EPFLoop team is placing its trust in composite manufacturer Gurit from the St.GallenBodenseeArea.
Gurit announced its sponsorship of the EPFLoop in a press release. This partnership enables the EPFL students to construct their innovative transport pod using Gurit’s lightweight materials. The EPFLoop pod is currently in the build phase, with the next stage of the competition taking place in California on 21 July 2019. Previous stages had assessed a variety of different criteria, and now the pods will be judged solely on one: maximum speed with successful deceleration.
Lorenzo Benedetti, team Leader of EPFLoop, said in the press release that the collaboration with Gurit engineers has been very fruitful. Together, they analyzed and optimized the structure step by step. The weight of the current pod structure has been reduced to one third of the EPFLoop prototype from 2018.