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to San Francisco. The same trip with a car would have
taken 5 hours and 30 minutes, 2 hours and 40 minutes
with the proposed bullet train, or 1 hour and 15 minute
by aircraft.^401 “Unlike an airplane, it is not subject to
turbulence, so there are no sudden movements. It would
feel supersmooth,” Elon said.^403 But we will still use aircraft
for longer distances as the optimal length of an Hyperloop
is 900 miles [1 500 km].^401
The released report argued that the pods could come in
one of two sizes. The smaller and thus cheaper pod can
carry 28 passengers. The larger more expensive pod can
carry as many passenger as the smaller pod, but also three
cars with the same size as a Model X from Tesla. Since the
major problem with electric cars is that they are difficult
to travel with over long distances, it would be much easier
if you could transport the car with the Hyperloop.^401 “You
just drive on, and the pod departs,” Elon said.^403
The Hyperloop and Elon’s other projects share a com-
mon thread: they solve large and difficult problems. Zip2
might have begun as a smaller idea since the founders
needed to make money as fast as possible. But as time
passed, Zip2 grew and Elon said the company could have
become as big as Yahoo. X.com competed with America’s
largest banks. SpaceX has the goal to colonize Mars. Elon’s
plan with Tesla was to reinvent the highly competitive
car industry by building General Motors 2.0. SolarCity
and Tesla are saving the world from its dependency on