It is being called the ‘Concorde of modern commute’. When Elon Musk first conceived the idea of shooting people through tubes at a whopping speed of 700 miles per hours, the chances that we’d be around to see it happen were slim. Until now Hyperloop’s leading start-up which has been renamed as Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) is showing that it’s not all hype.

The Los-Angeles based start-up first demonstrated its propulsion system yesterday. A day before the company had closed a phenomenal amount of $80 million as its Series B round of funding. The new investors on the bandwagon include 137 Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Fast Digital, Western Technology Investment, SNCF, the French National Rail Company, and GE Ventures.

Hyperloop’s CEO Robb Llyod mentioned in a blog post last December that Hyperloop would have its “kitty hawk moment” in 2016, referencing the North Carolina site of Wright Brothers’ flight. This was a much clearer reference to a full scale , two-mile test, which would happen later this year. Wednesday’s demonstration included a portion of the pod travelling for five seconds at over 300 mph–and crash landing into piles of sand, since the brakes haven’t been built yet.

Either way, the analogy isn’t a far reality, if successful. Hyperloop one’s rail could revolutionise the way people commute. It is said to give a fully functional system of magnetic pods by 2020 with $20 being the cost of a 400-mile journey; San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Hyperloop is imagined to operate in a near-vacuum tube, which will drastically limit air resistance. This would eventually limit air friction enabling the pod to float above the set of powerful magnets travelling at 760 miles per hour, just below the speed of sound.

Video: CNNMoney

Hyperloop’s yesterday announcements included partnering with SYSTRA, a public transportation engineering company. The two will work together to study high-speed systems in France, Russia, and the Middle East, according to a press release. It is said to start working with Nordic company FS Link to create a high-speed rail system between Sweden and Finland. At an event in Las Vegas, the company also presented a handful of other big-name engineering and transportation companies that it’s partnering with, including AECOM, Amberg Group, Arup, Bjarke Ingels Group, Deutsche Bahn, and KPMG.

The $100 million in funding will help, but Musk has said the project will cost $6 billion, and some experts think the final price tag will be far more. There also will be plenty of political glitches to jump through and land to purchase en-route to completing the 400-mile track. Musk called this “the fifth mode” of transportation — after boats, trains, motor vehicles and airplanes.  The Kitty Hawk moment might not be here yet, but it’s coming.

Source: Inc

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Thanks to the rapid growth in transportation sector, the number of vehicles on the roads is going up fast. With this, road safety is also an increasing concern, especially in India. Zendrive is a startup that tries to address the car safety issue by offering analytics on how the drivers are doing and it has recently raised USD 13.5 million in Series A funding. The funding round has been led by Sherpa Capital’s Shervin Pishevar and saw participation from Fontinalis Partners, BMW I Ventures, First Round Capital, Tad Montross, Thomvest Ventures and Nyca Partners.

To track the data of drivers, Zendrive doesn’t rely on any dedicated hardware. Instead it uses the data from multiple sensors on the mobile devices of drivers. So not only can it track location but also other factors like acceleration, braking, swerving and usage of phone and then puts these bits of information together to provide actionable insights. Using data from mobile phones is a very smart way of tracking the drivers as third party devices don’t see very strong rate of adoption.

Zendrive is available for developers to include as a part of their own app through an SDK. So it can be embedded with different apps and find many use cases. It can be used by commercial fleets, cab aggregators, self-drive rentals, valet services, roadside assistance and for driver training. Some apps that are already using Zendrive’s services are eDriving and Valet Anywhere.

Previously the company has raised USD 1.5 million in seed funding but the valuation remains undisclosed after the latest round. With more funds at disposal, the company plans to add new features and make its collision detection feature available to more people. The interest of BMW and Ford (through Fontinalis Partners) indicates that the technology is very promising and might find its way into cars of the future.

You can find more details about Zendrive here.

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