Hyperloop startup Arrivo is shutting down as workers are laid off

https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-arrivo-furloughs-layoffs-money-trouble

by prostoalex • 8 years ago

70 94 8 years ago

theverge.com

greenyoda2• 8 years ago

"Remaining employees were informed Friday via text messages"

What a rotten way to tell an employee that they just lost their job!

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 8 years ago

Why, from the article, it seems like everybody knew the company was struggling? What is the advantage of delivering in person? In fact, getting such news in person can be more awkward as you have to mask your emotion and pretend in front of them that it is not big deal. What hurts is the fact that they are losing their job, not the fact that the news came by text message.

smt885• 8 years ago

It is awkward to fire people and should be. The point of doing it in person is to let the employee know that they’re a human being who is worth the effort of spending 10 min in-person to talk about the lay-off.

Believe it or not, some people care whether they were thought of as a person or just a “human resource” on a spreadsheet.

porpoisely• 8 years ago

It's a terrible way to learn that you are out of a job. But it's fairly common in the startup scene - especially for startups that fail. Sometimes, they don't even bother sending you the text. You just show up one day to work to see the lights are out and office equipment is gone.

lowercased2• 8 years ago

i came back from a meeting at 3pm.

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.

networkimprov• 8 years ago

Disgruntled (ex-)employees are occasionally a hazard to company assets, and execs are afraid of mass disgruntlement :-)

rascul2• 8 years ago

I'd rather have a text message if it saves me fuel and time.

smt885• 8 years ago

I’d imagine you’d just prefer to hear about it while you’re already at work a few weeks in advance to allow you to prepare.

Animats2• 8 years ago

They may have shut down, but the hype is stil up.[1]

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

mc32• 8 years ago

Looking at it, CMU was involved (as well as Cal Berkeley), among academia, but required embedded transponders. This system is still very viable given that it would be cost effective on freeways where most of the miles are driven. It could have been a great transitional technology but DARPA went and distracted everyone with the great challenge and everyone wanted full autonomous navigation in unpredictable terrain...

busted• 8 years ago

I hadn't seen this before, really cool. Found more information on Wikipedia:

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.

Animats2• 8 years ago

With even minimal cooperation from the road, self-driving is far easier. Volvo wanted to drive magnetized nails into the pavement for better navigation in heavy snow.

vivekd• 8 years ago

Hyper loop tech is something that I simply don't understand. Is maintaining a vacuum inside a close loop really cheaper than electrifying a rail system? I would imagine it takes a lot more energy to decompress and maintain a vacuum in a loop at significant distances than just electrify the rail network.

rtkwe• 8 years ago

I believe the plan was not total vacuum but only partial to avoid having to pull so far down. Also Hyperloop if it was built/buildable as designed is kind of the step beyond high speed rail.

macspoofing4• 8 years ago

There's no practical difference between a 'total vacuum' and 'partial vacuum' in this case.

prostoalex2• 8 years ago

In theory cheaper to build (laying a dumb pre-manufactured pipe versus electrified rail) and cheaper to operate (build redundant vacuum stations). But yes, the main value prop is for areas with cheap (free?) electricity.

pojzon• 8 years ago

laying a dumb pre-manufactured pipe

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.

jccooper• 8 years ago

It's not about the motive power; it's about speed.

bb2018• 8 years ago

I don't understand it either. The difficult thing in any transport system like this is clearly the land and land rights. If you can't make that cheaper and easier to manage from a legal perspective than I don't see how a slightly better mode of transportation would offset it.

Robotbeat5• 8 years ago

A high speed train can cause really nasty buffeting and acoustic pollution, extending the amount of landing buffer you need. This gets worse at high speed. A vacuum train eliminates that.

kurthr• 8 years ago

That's why tunneling would probably be a better choice than going overland, certainly cheaper at Japan's costs than California's.

Robotbeat5• 8 years ago

Arrivo weren't really a vacuum system, at least for the last year or so.

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.

mpweiher• 8 years ago

drag at sea level is a killer.

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.

netcan• 8 years ago

Key point: at high speed.

If want to go 1000km in 3-4 hrs then you are the kind of problem hyperloop might solve.

macspoofing4• 8 years ago

In principle, you can keep a vacuum pretty easily.

Keeping a vacuum over a length of hundreds of km is pretty hard, and in fact, has never been done.

goodcanadian• 8 years ago

Well, you've got some pretty good answers, but I'll give it a go as well.

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.

bufferoverflow• 8 years ago

The vacuum lets you travel much faster, potentially much faster than planes.

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.

candiodari• 8 years ago

Evacuation isn't a problem at all. This is what happens to a failing vacuum tube.

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.

pfdietz2• 8 years ago

I think it may make more sense for high speed package delivery, for example between FedEx hubs. Smaller diameter, no need to keep passengers live, and possibly much higher acceleration tolerance.

auslander3• 8 years ago

It is an AMP page, bad taste, why not the normal link ?

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-arriv...

gandutraveler• 8 years ago

I personally prefer AMP. it's smoother, cleaner , faster. I know that some in HN community are against AMP (rightly so) but I don't think it's in bad taste for anyone to post a AMP link.

auslander3• 8 years ago

What if there is a crash ? In Hyperloop it means vacuum all around, and even on minor accidents you'll die horrible death :D

joering2• 8 years ago

Honest question... idea was based on Elon Musk's papers, who pre-engineer the thing and even gave it a name. How come he couldn't found it? Last I checked Musk is worth north of $22 Billion dollars, did the Arrivo management try to talk him into investment ??

smt885• 8 years ago

Someone might have an idea they think is “good” without wanting to invest in it. “Good idea” is only one part of the recipe. Timing is another huge part. So is having access to the right talent, the right geographical area, etc.

I think it’s unrealistic to expect Musk to invest in any hyperloop startup without considering the timing and the team involved.

sqrut• 8 years ago

His net worth of $22 billion is in the shares of SpaceX and Tesla he owns, not cash lying around that he can invest. He actually takes loans against his shares to pay for his living expenses.

macspoofing4• 8 years ago

He actually takes loans against his shares to pay for his living expenses.

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.

Robotbeat5• 8 years ago

His net worth is entirely wrapped up in Tesla and SpaceX. And it's leveraged, too.

The exception is now The Boring Company, which long-term is going to try doing Hyperloop.

_ph_• 8 years ago

Elon Musk never just invests money into other peoples business. If he were to do hyperloop, he would run the engineering himsef - and does he really need another project to drive?

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.

philwelch• 8 years ago

A few reasons.

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.

ksec2• 8 years ago

The company, started by former Hyperloop One executives, furloughed all employees in November while it sought new funding

Slightly off topic: I am seeing a lot more "Startup" having difficulties getting funding than usual. What is happening to VCs and Silicon Valley?

atomicUpdate• 8 years ago

It seems they’re actually doing due diligence again.

lunchbreak• 8 years ago

When the Federal reserve lowered interest rates investors had to look for places to invest their money to make a larger return. Now that rates have risen there is not as much money flowing to VCs because there are safer - albeit less profitable - investments

sxcurry• 8 years ago

“The ethos of the company is trying to switch the paradigm,” BamBrogan told The Verge in 2017. “Mobility and transportation are both words that talk about the ‘getting there.’ And we want to make it so seamless. I don’t want to get to dinner with my friend, I want to be at dinner with my friend.”

It seems that anyone who would fund this kind of garbage talk might have more money than sense.

bfung2• 8 years ago

My read of the article in paraphrases:

    "(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,..."

Basically, unstable guy who was ousted form Hyperloop one by the whole board and officers started another, similar company, and trouble again.

Except this time, trouble is in charge.

curtis2• 8 years ago

I don't know if BamBrogan is an "unstable guy" or not. But I'm not at all sure your summary "who was ousted form Hyperloop one by the whole board and officers" is accurate based on what was reported at the time.

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...

bfung2• 8 years ago

I total get the stress of getting funding or not - been there myself this past year.

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".

jlangenauer• 8 years ago

The thing with hyperloop that I've not seen solved yet: points/switches. How do you divert the vehicles between two different paths?

konschubert• 8 years ago

The problems of long distance rail transport today: Construction permissions, construction cost, operational cost, global vulnerability in case of local operational problems.

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.

syntaxing• 8 years ago

Is the drag on a high speed trains mainly inertial or skin (parasitic) or is it pretty even? I would expect it to be mainly inertial since it's moving at such a fast speed. If that's the case, isn't there a lot of different techniques to reduce drag actively and dynamically that they can explore instead of drawing vacuum?

tartoran• 8 years ago

Would it be feasible to build a system of propellers to take advantage of the non vacuum on the train itself?

nixpulvis3• 8 years ago

Can we just get trains even half as good as in Japan here in the US. A high speed train (not hyperloop speeds) connecting the east coast cities together all the way down to Miami, for example would be huge. Doing Boston to DC in just ~3 hours would be amazing. And would beat the airports easily.

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.

solarkraft2• 8 years ago

Hyperloops are trains.

A major part of the infrastructure needed, land, is the same. So it's not inconceivable to convert between the two.

nixpulvis3• 8 years ago

Even better, if we can just upgrade the bullet trains later! Mayyyybe the idea is it'll be easier to hype a new fancy train to sell to the public, but I think it's foolish. We should start building bullet trains yesterday.

protomyth2• 8 years ago

Need to buy it its own track since the cargo rails actually pay for themselves and have a lot of other infrastructure tied to them. I get the feeling it would actually be easier to get the land for a hyperloop (cool new thing, quieter, and no chance of hitting someone).

vertex-four• 8 years ago

You could have no chance of hitting someone by using fences along track like in the U.K. plus platform edge doors (so that nobody is ever exposed to the railway in any legitimate circumstance), or raised/tunnelled track where maintained fences aren’t a possibility. You could even use drones to monitor your fence, for another cool factor.

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!).

Hyperloop startup Arrivo is shutting down as workers are laid off

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