Hyperloop One

​​Virgin Hyperloop One has expanded its relationship with Saudi Arabia, with the two announcing plans to develop a new test track in the country’s west. The facility would become the world’s longest hyperloop tube as the gulf nation eyes a wider rollout of the futuristic transport system.​

​Virgin Hyperloop One has welcomed the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to a test facility in the Mojave Desert, showing off a specially branded passenger pod as the county looks to accelerate its efforts to get the futuristic transport system up and running.

​Virgin Hyperloop One has been making inroads in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a little while. Now it has unveiled a prototype pod developed together with Dubai's transport authority, offering locals a little glimpse at a potential future of subsonic tube travel.

Together with the local government, Richard Branson's Virgin Hyperloop One has today announced plans to build a 25-minute Hyperloop connection between the Indian cities of Pune and Mumbai, which is currently a two-hour trip by car.

Virgin Hyperloop One has set a new speed record at its Nevada test center. An unmanned test pod reached a speed of nearly 387 km/h (240 mph) while running through an evacuated cylinder depressurized to the equivalent air pressure at an altitude of 200,000 feet (37 mi, 61 km).

Thanks to Sir Richard Branson, Hyperloop One is now Virgin Hyperloop One. The rebranding was announced by the Virgin Group founder and CEO on his blog, in which he said that the change follows an undisclosed, but substantial investment by Virgin in the US-based transportation start up.

Hyperloop One's Global Challenge is an XPrize-style competition to draw out the globe's brightest ideas for the most promising Hyperloop routes. The company has today announced the 10 winners, with potential routes spanning three continents and more than 6,000 km (3,700 mi) worth of track.

​​A few weeks back, Hyperloop One revealed a prototype of a pod that it hopes will eventually ferry passengers through near-vacuum tubes at around the speed of sound. Today, the company has announced the first successful tests of this futuristic capsule.

​​Hyperloop One, just one of several startups trying to build Elon Musk's Hyperloop, has notched up an important milestone, today announcing it has successfully tested its full-scale system for the first time, which including levitating a test vehicle over a track for 5.3 seconds.

As part of its globe-spanning ambitions to introduce partial vacuum transportation to the masses,​ Hyperloop One has added another nine potential routes in Europe as a result of the start up's Global Challenge.

With a few different players now in the game, the race is on to get the Hyperloop up and running. For LA-based startup Hyperloop One, that means rolling into Dubai with photos of its full-scale test track and a few renderings of what the first Middle Eastern Hyperloop stations might look like.​​

Hyperloop board member Peter Diamandis has confirmed in an interview with "Business Insider" that the company is interested in producing an underwater version of its tube transportation system.