Why Vladimir Putin wants a Hyperloop in Russia

Hyperloop, which was first envisioned by Tesla founder Elon Musk as a way to zip passengers in tubes from San Francisco to L.A. at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour, could now be first built overseas, possibly in Russia.

"The Russians were first to space with Sputnik and could be first again to transonic travel with the Hyperloop," wrote Bruce Upbin, the company's vice-president for communications, in a recent blog post.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin talked about his support for Hyperloop at a recent economic forum in St. Petersburg.

“He expressed big interest in this project and promised state backing for implementing it,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, wrote recently in a text message to Bloomberg.

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Hyperloop One has feasibility studies underway in Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Dubai, the Port of Los Angeles and the United Kingdom. But Russia is where part of its $100 million in investment capital is coming from, a company spokesman told KPCC. 

The Kremlin wants to find new ways to transport goods and passengers across the vast country as well as improve both transportation in gridlocked cities like Moscow, according to William Courtney, a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation. 

“There are massive jams there," said Courtney. “When I was there two weeks ago it took me two hours to get downtown to the airport.”

Courtney says Russian investors may also see Hyperloop as a way to tap into Silicon Valley companies. However, Courtney is skeptical that they should be backed by the government, especially since Russia's economy has been suffering because of low oil prices.

"It's a technology that's pretty far from maturity, and it really doesn't speak to the transportation priorities that Russia should have at this moment," said Courtney. 

"Putin said Hyperloop will fundamentally change the global economy," wrote Shervin Pishevar, the founder and executive chairman of Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One in a Facebook post, after the two attended the St. Petersburg forum. 

At the forum, the company signed an agreement with Moscow as well as the Summa Group, a private holding firm which already has major infrastructure investments in Russia, to explore building high-capacity passenger systems.

"Hyperloop can improve life dramatically for the 16 million people in the greater Moscow area, cutting their commute to a fraction of what it is today," said Shervin Pishevar, co-founder and executive chairman of Hyperloop One, in a written statement. "Our longer term vision is to work with Russia to implement a transformative new Silk Road: a cargo Hyperloop that whisks freight containers from China to Europe in a day."