Transpod - Financial Pressures Threaten Droux France Test Track

Transpod Boondoogle Continues 

test track location photo credit - Jean-Louis Mercier le populaire, france 

It is time to do an update on the Canadian based company, Transpod, that is developing a hyperloop vehicle capable of going 1000 km/h. You can read previous posts on our High Speed Rail Canada website to give you background on the subject..

• As you may recall Transpod had secured US$550 million in funding from a Chinese government owned company,China-East Resources Import & Export Company in cooperation with UK-based Broughton Capital Group.
• They had proposed to build a fully functional line between Edmonton-Calgary. In 2025 they will have a fully functional full scale vehicle testing on a test track there. Cost of the line is $23 billion. They are even discussing a Toronto-Montreal line.
• Transpod had stated in 2019 they were building a test track in Droux France and would begin testing in 2020. In 2022, nothing was built.
• In July 2022, Transpod unveiled their ⅓ size test (baby fleuxjet) vehicle that did not move.

Thanks to the excellent reporting of Jean-Louis Mercier at le populaire, france, we have the latest update and things are not looking good. Here is a link to that article.

Transpod 2023 Droux France Troubles

Here are the latest salient points.

• There will indeed be a hyperloop test track in Droux, but it will be reduced to 250 meters to 300 meters instead of 2.5 km long initially planned.
• According to Fabien Larocca (Director of Transpod France) “Droux test site is really essential to the project, but to make Droux, we need a team in Canada. We are raising Canadian funds.”
• “It has always been a question of fundraising, the funds we have received are not sufficient. We have a lot of subsystems set up in Droux, for this we need to expand the engineering team in Toronto, we need small preliminary prototypes in Toronto. This represents a total budget of €75 million."
• The le populaire article asked the question, What were the €2 million in European funds delivered through the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region used for? “These funds were used to pay the six employees of Transpod France, including three researchers in Limoges. As we were unable to start the Droux site, we were unable to recruit the entire team.

 In conclusion, nothing has changed, the facts are clear, there are no test tracks and there are no working full scale models capable of going 1000 km/h. What is new is they do not have enough money to fund the projects they committed to in 2019 including the test track in Droux, France.

In my opinion, Transpod, like other unproven transportation technologies, will be a continual money drain to anyone that invests with little to no hope to recover it.

Paul Langan, Founder, High Speed Rail Canada