---
title: "MIT Students Win Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Design Competition"
description: "Students from MIT have won the Elon Musk Hyperloop contest. Their winning design will be tested on the world's first Hyperloop Test Track in California."
date: "2016-02-02"
modified: "2016-02-02"
authors:
  - name: "Sarah Marquart"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/sarah_fqtq"
url: "https://futurism.com/mit-students-win-elon-musks-hyperloop-design-competition"
categories:
  - "Advanced Transport"
  - "Elon Musk"
  - "Future Society"
  - "Hyperloop"
  - "Mass Transit"
  - "The Industrialists"
tags:
  - "elon musk"
  - "hyperloop"
  - "SpaceX"
  - "tesla motors"
---

# MIT Students Win Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Design Competition

![](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/493493-mit-hyperloop-design-prototype-1.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Hyperloop\</em\>*

The [Hyperloop](<https://futurism.com/category/future-society>), a conceptual high-speed transportation system put forward by SpaceX and Tesla Motors co-founder [Elon Musk](<http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf>), is one step closer to being a reality. The technology proposes a way to transport "pods" of 20 to 30 people through a 12-foot diameter tube at speeds of roughly 700 mph.

##### A New Mode of Transportation

Saturday, student engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, won a competition to design and build Musk's proposed concept.

![Screen Shot 2016-02-01 at 5.10.19 PM](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Screen-Shot-2016-02-01-at-5.10.19-PM.png>)
*[*Elon Musk*](<http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf>)*

The teams were judged on a variety of criteria, including innovation and uniqueness of design; full Hyperloop system applicability and economics; level of design detail; strength of supporting analysis and tests; feasibility for test tract competition; and quality of documentation and presentation.

The primary goal of the MIT Hyperloop Team is as follows:

*(i) successfully demonstrate a scalable levitation technology, and (ii) safely achieve a cruise speed greater than 100 m/s (Mach 0.3). To achieve these goals, our proposed pod is approximately 2.5 meters long and uses permanent magnet arrays for electrodynamic levitation.*

The competition, hosted at [Texas A&M University](<http://hyperloop.tamu.edu>) in College Station, gathered more than 1,000 college students. In total, more than 100 university teams presented design concepts to a panel of judges over the weekend.

![hyperloopwou](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/hyperloopwou.jpg>)
**AP Photo/Tesla Motors**

Delft University of Technology from The Netherlands finished second, the University of Wisconsin third, Virginia Tech fourth and the University of California, Irvine, fifth.

##### Breaking Ground

Twenty-two of the top teams will [build their pods](<http://phys.org/news/2016-01-mit-competition-elon-musk-hyperloop.html#jCp>) and test them at the world's first Hyperloop Test Track, which is being built next to SpaceX's Hawthorne, California headquarters.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies plans to [break ground](<http://www.popsci.com/construction-on-hyperloop-test-track-to-start-soon-in-california>) this year on the 5-mile, $150 million track that will serve Quay Valley, a real-estate development in California. It could start carrying passengers as soon as 2018.

### Author social links  
[Facebook](<https://www.facebook.com/sarah.marquart>)  
[LinkedIn](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-marquart-ba7aa38b>)  
[Twitter](<https://x.com/sagaofsarah>)