RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘Hyperloop’

While Waiting for Hyperloop, Sleep Through Long Drives on Cabin Buses

02 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

Someday, we’ll supposedly be able to zoom from one city to the next in no time flat thanks to the Hyperloop, but that day is not today. Elon Musk’s high-speed transit system Hyperloop One has been successfully tested, and promises to cut the 400-mile trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco down to just 30 minutes, but it’ll take it a while to get off the ground. In the meantime, our options are still limited to air travel, personal vehicles, trains and buses. Buses are easily accessible and cheap, but they cost a whole lot of time and discomfort instead.

If you’ve ever taken an inter-city bus trip, you know how it goes. More often than not, you’re crammed in with dozens of other people, breathing stale air, hoping the person coughing next to you won’t get you sick. Even worse, inter-city bus travel is notoriously inefficient, requiring a lot of stops and ultimately taking a lot longer than it would if you were driving a car. Ever wish you could just block out your surroundings and sleep through it without drooling on somebody’s shoulder?

A new service called ‘Cabin’ aims to bridge the gap between bus travel and air travel with comfortable one-person sleeping pods, so you get your own private little area in which to stretch out and lay down during a long drive. The company bills itself as “the dreamiest way to travel between LA and SF,” acting as a hotel on wheels that transports you to your destination while you’re sleeping.

The company worked with hospitality architects to “completely reinvent the bus as we know it,” outfitting each pod with hotel-like amenities like free wi-fi, fresh bedding, complimentary water, tea, coffee, earplugs and even a melatonin supplement to help you fall asleep.

With a round-trip cost of $ 230 to get back and forth between San Francisco and LA, Cabin definitely isn’t the cheapest option; you can take a Bolt bus for just $ 50, and many airlines offer routes between the cities for as low as $ 69 each way. But we all know how much comfort airlines have sacrificed in recent years to keep their costs down, and an air trip with a pod this cozy would cost many times that amount. Plus, there’s no dealing with airports, hidden fees or traffic.

The future of inter-city travel will likely include self-driving vehicles and highway trains, but for now, this seems like a pretty cool option, especially for people who feel particularly stressed about flying. Cabin launched last year as SleepBus, and after a highly successful test run, raise $ 3.3 million to continue, with plans to expand to the East Coast.

Share on Facebook





[ By SA Rogers in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]


WebUrbanist

 
Comments Off on While Waiting for Hyperloop, Sleep Through Long Drives on Cabin Buses

Posted in Creativity

 

Hyperloop Hotel: Zoom from City to City in a Luxury Lodging Pod

22 Jun

[ By SA Rogers in Drawing & Digital. ]

Hyperloop transit is about to make the world a whole lot smaller, and with it could come a system of luxurious private pods outfitted like high-end hotel rooms so you can zoom from one city to the next in unprecedented comfort. While it might seem like there’s little need for such cush train cars when your trip takes less time than ever, the Hyperloop Hotel aims to solve the problem of where you’re going to stay while traveling.

Developed by Radical Innovation Award winner Brendan Siebrecht, the Hyperloop Hotel consists of shipping containers that double as traveling guest suites, able to ‘dock’ themselves at any of 13 different hotel stations in cities like Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Austin and New York City. While the nightly fee hasn’t been set yet, Siebrecht reveals that for a fee of $ 1,200, guests can even visit multiple cities in a single day. That’s right, you could maintain a comfy home base while having breakfast on the East Coast, lunch in the South and dinner on the West Coast.

It might sound too futuristic to be real, but Hyperloop One is already being tested in Las Vegas and could be carrying passengers by the year 2020, so it’s actually not that far away, assuming the technology stays on track (pun intended.) But the hotels definitely wouldn’t come cheap – it would cost about $ 10 million to build each one. The pods themselves feature a bedroom, office, bathroom and living room, with a glazed wall that can be covered while you’re in motion.

“I believe the Hyperloop One is the next big innovation in transportation in the United States and possibly the world,” Siebrecht told Business Insider. “I wanted to explore ways in which this technology could transform the overall travel experience and hospitality.”

Share on Facebook





[ By SA Rogers in Drawing & Digital. ]

[ WebUrbanist | Archives | Galleries | Privacy | TOS ]


WebUrbanist

 
Comments Off on Hyperloop Hotel: Zoom from City to City in a Luxury Lodging Pod

Posted in Creativity