Fluxjet: At over 1000 km/h through Canada

The Canadian start-up TransPod is developing the Fluxjet, a mixture of airplane and train. Using a Hyperloop system, the Fluxjet will transport passengers and goods through the western Canadian province of Alberta at a speed of over 1,000 kilometers per hour.

The first route for the Fluxjet is to be installed between the cities of Calgary and Edmonton in western Canada. The aircraft-train hybrid from the company TransPod will soon be transporting people and goods here – faster than a jet and even three times faster than a high-speed train. Accordingly, the Fluxjet will cover the 300 kilometers between the Canadian cities in just 45 minutes.

TransPod announced the Fluxjet back in 2020 together with the government of the western Canadian province of Alberta. Thanks to the successful financing round, in which 550 million US dollars were raised, implementation has already begun. Both an environmental impact assessment and preparatory construction work are already underway. In total, the company expects the project to cost around 18 billion euros.

Technically speaking, the fluxjet is based on the concept of the hyperloop. This means that an electrically driven magnetic levitation train is located in a vacuum tube. In this way, the Fluxjet moves through the tube system with almost no resistance. However, if slower speeds are required, such as in cities, the Fluxjet can also roll from station to station on wheels. The capsule only enters a vacuum system at the edge of the city and floats to the next city at maximum speed.

With a length of 25 meters, a capsule offers space for 54 people or ten tons of goods. Passengers have to pay 75 Canadian dollars to use the Fluxjet. Converted into euros, that is around 57 euros. With such a price, the new transportation system can also compete with airplanes. In addition to its price competitiveness, it is also worth comparing it from an ecological point of view. After all, the Fluxjet is designed to travel solely on the basis of innovative energies and, unlike airplanes, is therefore independent of climate-damaging fossil fuels.

The Hyperloop system is not only being researched in Canada. Back in 2013, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk published a white paper on the hyperloop concept that was accessible to everyone. As an open source document, it serves several companies as the basis for a possible implementation of the system. In Germany, for example, the Technical University of Munich is working on the construction of a test track.

However, despite all the euphoria surrounding the new means of transportation, critical voices continue to be heard. For example, Die Zeit writes that the installation of Hyperloop systems in densely populated Europe would be difficult to implement. In addition, the construction of both underground and overground routes would be costly. As a result, this type of mobility is hardly profitable.

All in all, the Fluxjet is a technically highly sophisticated pioneering project. Although ideas of a nationwide Hyperloop network are utopian, some highly frequented routes could be linked in this way. Perhaps this will at least make a small contribution to the mobility revolution. However, at 1,000 kilometers per hour, the Fluxjet is probably far too fast to make the transition to sustainable mobility on its own.

Read more: The Swiss start-up Sun-Ways wants to install solar modules on train tracks to generate green electricity.