Team from TUM Munich wins trophy at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition for the third consecutive time with components and solutions by Panasonic Industry on board.
On July 22nd WARR Hyperloop did it again – the team from the Technical University of Munich won the Hyperloop Pod Competition for the third consecutive time. The event was hosted by SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk, at the company’s Hawthorne, California headquarters, as it has been since its inauguration. But let's start at the beginning: For years Californian political and business leaders have discussed the merits of a high-speed rail system between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Frustrated by the debate and alarmed by the costs, environmental impact and energy requirements for this new rail line, Elon Musk, proposed a radical new mode of transportation: The Hyperloop. The idea behind the Hyperloop is simple: propel passengers between cities at speeds of over 970km/h in capsules that float in partial vacuum tubes. With less air resistance, pods can reach and maintain supersonic speeds – powered entirely by solar energy - transporting passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 30 minutes.
While the idea may be simple, the engineering isn’t. Therefore in June 2015, SpaceX announced an open competition for independent and university engineering teams to design a half-scale Hyperloop pod and have it tested on a track at SpaceX. What started out as Elon Musk’s ambitious, possibly far-fetched, concept has transformed into the next obvious step for transportation. Students and engineers around the world have taken on the technical challenges involved, and, in the spirit of collective progress, all intellectual property produced during the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition will be publicly available, ensuring that nothing stands in the way of implementing a full-scale Hyperloop, thus delivering a fundamentally better transportation future.
Panasonic’s sensor, resistor, as well as relay products used in the 2018 pod from the WARR Hyperloop team played an essential role in achieving the goals of miniaturization and increased efficiency. In the following video you can find out more how the laser sensor HG-C1050, TX 2 relays and Thick Film Chip Resistors contributed to the design challenges: