Idea Overload 327
The Hyperloop could go from city center to city center
[San Francisco to Los Angeles] in not much more than
a half-hour.”^316 While the California bullet train will cost
$70 billion, Elon thought the Hyperloop would cost only $7
billion.^401
The Hyperloop was a secret project and Elon didn’t
want to reveal any major details when asked to do so by
reporters. But the Hyperloop was finally revealed in August
12, 2013. The released document is not the final document
as Elon’s idea is to give away the basic idea to anyone who
wants to build it. “I just want to put it out there in a way
that doesn’t require me to do day-to-day execution,” Elon
said. “I would like to do less, actually. I tried my hardest to
avoid being CEO of Tesla. Running two companies is not
the most fun thing in the world.”^400
If no one shows any interest in the idea, Elon will
probably build a smaller prototype of the Hyperloop to get
things moving. If he wasn’t the CEO of two companies,
it would have taken one to two years to build this pro-
totype. Then it would take another five years before we
could travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles in 35
minutes.^400
The Hyperloop is a glorified roller coaster with two
stations. “It’s like getting a ride on Space Mountain at
Disneyland,” Elon said.^403 Single pods leave the stations
continuously and travels inside of a steel tube. There are
two tubes, one in each direction, and the tube sits on
the top of concrete pillars. The idea is to construct these
pillars along an already existing highway to avoid spending