
Hyperloop startup Arrivo is shutting down as workers are laid off - prostoalex
https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-arrivo-furloughs-layoffs-money-trouble
======
bfung
My read of the article in paraphrases:

    
    
        "(Arrivo)... started by former SpaceX engineer Brogan BamBrogan, who was a co-founder of Hyperloop One."
    
        "Two of BamBrogan’s fellow co-founders had resigned..."
    
        "One of the co-founders ... left in October, came to Arrivo from construction firm AECOM’s venture wing. 
         Jadon Smith, a fellow SpaceX veteran who has also worked for Lockheed Martin and the CIA, left shortly after, ..."
    
        ***"Arrivo was born from of the ashes of BamBrogan’s relationship with Hyperloop One.
         The co-founder was ousted from Hyperloop One in the summer of 2016 after a clash
         with fellow co-founder Shervin Pishevar, his brother Afshin Pishevar (who was chief legal officer), CEO Rob Lloyd,
        and the startup’s board of directors."
    
        "...that a member of the company’s leadership brought an axe into the office, displayed it,
         and also used it to punch holes into a wall.
    
         That person was BamBrogan,..."
    

Basically, unstable guy who was ousted form Hyperloop one by the whole board
and officers started another, similar company, and trouble again.

Except this time, trouble is in charge.

~~~
curtis
I don't know if BamBrogan is an "unstable guy" or not. But I'm not at all sure
your summary "who was ousted form Hyperloop one by the whole board and
officers" is accurate based on what was reported at the time.

For example, from an article in Wired [1]:

> _The lawsuit against Hyperloop One includes a security camera image of a
> man, apparently Afshin Pishevar, holding rope and walking through the
> office. BamBrogan allegedly found a noose on his desk after complaining
> about company operations._

The axe is the only thing that seems weird, everything else you quoted can
easily be explained by the fact that they'd failed to secure more funding and
had to shut down even though they didn't want to. Many of us on Hacker News
have no doubt experienced this kind of situation first hand.

Also I should mention that although Arrivo was started by ex-Hyperloop One
people they were definitely not doing a hyperloop system.

[1] [https://www.wired.com/2016/07/hyperloop-lawsuit-brogan-
bambr...](https://www.wired.com/2016/07/hyperloop-lawsuit-brogan-bambrogan-
shervin-pishevar/)

~~~
bfung
I total get the stress of getting funding or not - been there myself this past
year.

But axes and nooses are not normal. What kind of passive-aggressive childish
behavior is this? How about sitting down and talk business like adults, state
and TALK about each person's perspective of things, and not go psycho? Ousting
maybe normal, but if things were normal, the usual news wouldn't be "ousted"
\- the worse language is usually "parted ways with disagreement".

~~~
curtis
Neither of them are normal, but they're not the same thing. The allegation is
that BamBrogan was the target in the noose incident, and there is some
security footage which seems to corroborate it. In the axe incident BamBrogan
allegedly took the axe to the office wall. That's pretty crazy but so far
nobody has claimed he was trying to intimidate somebody else. In this case
it's maybe interesting to note that it wasn't just any axe, but rather "The
CEO [BamBrogan] had built the axe at Jeff Bezos’ MARS conference this past
spring." [1]

The guy definitely seems flamboyant, but that's not the same as unstable. I
mean he might be unstable too, but I don't think one can draw that conclusion
from the reporting.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-
arriv...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-arrivo-
furloughs-layoffs-money-trouble)

------
vivekd
Hyper loop tech is something that I simply don't understand. Is maintaining a
vacuum inside a close loop really cheaper than electrifying a rail system? I
would imagine it takes a lot more energy to decompress and maintain a vacuum
in a loop at significant distances than just electrify the rail network.

~~~
Robotbeat
Arrivo weren't really a vacuum system, at least for the last year or so.

But the thing is that electrified rail networks doesn't address the
quadratically increasing losses from drag at high speeds. There's a reason you
don't see railroads operating at airline speeds: drag at sea level is a
killer. In fact, at high enough speeds, the energy of air travel is actually
LOWER than that of a sea level train.\

Altitude gives you a lot of efficiency. The idea of the vacuum train is to
bring that efficiency down to sea level. And I think it's a good idea, but a
real engineering challenge. In principle, you can keep a vacuum pretty easily.
Vacuum tubes remain sealed and evacuated for decades without energy
consumption, for instance.

It's just at the interfaces you have to worry about leakage, and there it's a
matter of careful sealing. It's possible to get really good at it. The
International Space Station is full of interfaces (and thermal cycling every
90 minutes) and would quickly run out of air if we didn't know how to maintain
a vacuum well at interfaces.

~~~
mpweiher
> drag at sea level is a killer.

Yes. Apparently when jet turbines came along they were discounted as ever
being useful for commercial/passenger airplanes because they were so
incredibly inefficient. I mean, really incredibly inefficient.

What they didn't take into account is that the turbines allow you to fly at
much, much higher altitudes. The reduced drag there more than makes up for the
lower efficiency. And gets you a smoother ride and higher speeds as well.

Modern turbofan engines are much more efficient, but that's basically because
they really are turbo-props with enclosed propellers, though we call them
"high bypass turbofans".

And of course if jets have to drop to a lower altitude, for example because
their cabin has become depressurised, range is drastically reduced.

~~~
pfdietz
They're turboprops, but they're turboprops that don't have the speed limit
imposed by the need to keep propeller blade tips from exceeding the speed of
sound.

------
Animats
They may have shut down, but the hype is stil up.[1]

This wasn't a "hyperloop" at all. It was a private freeway toll lane scheme
with self-driving in the toll lane. Like CALTRANS demonstrated with Demo 97
back in 1997.[2] They had self-driving in dedicated lanes working back then.

[1] [https://www.arrivo-loop.com/](https://www.arrivo-loop.com/) [2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlZEeIC_2lI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlZEeIC_2lI)

~~~
busted
I hadn't seen this before, really cool. Found more information on Wikipedia:

> In 1991, the United States Congress passed the ISTEA Transportation
> Authorization bill, which instructed USDOT to "demonstrate an automated
> vehicle and highway system by 1997." The Federal Highway Administration took
> on this task, first with a series of Precursor Systems Analyses and then by
> establishing the National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC). This
> cost-shared project was led by FHWA and General Motors, with Caltrans,
> Delco, Parsons Brinkerhoff, Bechtel, UC-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon
> University, and Lockheed Martin as additional partners. Extensive systems
> engineering work and research culminated in Demo '97 on I-15 in San Diego,
> California, in which about 20 automated vehicles, including cars, buses, and
> trucks, were demonstrated to thousands of onlookers, attracting extensive
> media coverage. The demonstrations involved close-headway platooning
> intended to operate in segregated traffic, as well as "free agent" vehicles
> intended to operate in mixed traffic. Other carmakers were invited to
> demonstrate their systems, such that Toyota and Honda also participated.
> While the subsequent aim was to produce a system design to aid
> commercialization, the program was cancelled in the late 1990s due to
> tightening research budgets at USDOT. Overall funding for the program was in
> the range of $90 million. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_self-
> driving_cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_self-driving_cars))

7 years later there was the first DARPA Grand Challenge, where no cars
completed successfully. There's a great episode of startup podcast with
interviews of the original competitors:
[https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/grand-challenge-
season-6...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/grand-challenge-
season-6-episode-7).

It's interesting to wonder whether and how much farther we'd be with self
driving cars and computer vision in general if the government had continued to
put its resources behind this project.

~~~
Animats
With even minimal cooperation from the road, self-driving is far easier. Volvo
wanted to drive magnetized nails into the pavement for better navigation in
heavy snow.

------
greenyoda
> "Remaining employees were informed Friday via text messages"

What a rotten way to tell an employee that they just lost their job!

~~~
porpoisely
It's a terrible way to learn that you are out of a job. But it's fairly common
in the startup scene - especially for startups that fail. Sometimes, they
don't even bother sending you the text. You just show up one day to work to
see the lights are out and office equipment is gone.

~~~
lowercased
i came back from a meeting at 3pm.

3:07 - guy in the cube next to me said "wtf, my email to you just bounced
back?"

3:09 someone came with a box to escort me out of the building.

3:19 main client calls me on my mobile asking why emails to me are bouncing. i
was the only contact and worker on the client's project. HR person wanted me
out so bad they just cut me off without transitioning the client services to
someone else.

~~~
TomMarius
Well, did you take the client with you?

~~~
lowercased
Basically yes. They contacted me after I left and brought their business to
me.

------
auslander
It is an AMP page, bad taste, why not the normal link ?

[https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-
arriv...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/14/18128848/hyperloop-arrivo-
furloughs-layoffs-money-trouble)

~~~
gandutraveler
I personally prefer AMP. it's smoother, cleaner , faster. I know that some in
HN community are against AMP (rightly so) but I don't think it's in bad taste
for anyone to post a AMP link.

------
nixpulvis
Can we just get trains even half as good as in Japan here in the US. A high
speed train (not hyperloop speeds) connecting the east coast cities together
all the way down to Miami, for example would be huge. Doing Boston to DC in
just ~3 hours would be amazing. And would beat the airports easily.

Maybe in hindsight I'll be eating my words when they figure out how to
actually build these hyper loops and we will all be traveling really fast with
them, but I'm a bit more skeptical than that, and a good solution seems to
exist already.

~~~
protomyth
Need to buy it its own track since the cargo rails actually pay for themselves
and have a lot of other infrastructure tied to them. I get the feeling it
would actually be easier to get the land for a hyperloop (cool new thing,
quieter, and no chance of hitting someone).

~~~
vertex-four
You could have no chance of hitting someone by using fences along track like
in the U.K. plus platform edge doors (so that nobody is ever exposed to the
railway in any legitimate circumstance), or raised/tunnelled track where
maintained fences aren’t a possibility. You could even use drones to monitor
your fence, for another cool factor.

People would have similar concerns about the visual pollution of Hyperloop vs
fencing, and auditory pollution can be solved by correctly maintained sound
barriers (even trees!).

~~~
protomyth
_You could have no chance of hitting someone by using fences along track like
in the U.K._

Those aren't exactly 100% effective through lack of maintenance, stupidity, or
just plain malice. Plus, train tracks need snow removal. A closed system is a
big win for weather.

------
konschubert
The problems of long distance rail transport today: Construction permissions,
construction cost, operational cost, global vulnerability in case of local
operational problems.

A Hyperloop solves NONE of these. In fact it would intensify almost all of
them.

One thing that’s not a problem with rail transport today: Max Speed.

------
jlangenauer
The thing with hyperloop that I've not seen solved yet: points/switches. How
do you divert the vehicles between two different paths?

------
sxcurry
“The ethos of the company is trying to switch the paradigm,” BamBrogan told
The Verge in 2017. “Mobility and transportation are both words that talk about
the ‘getting there.’ And we want to make it so seamless. I don’t want to get
to dinner with my friend, I want to be at dinner with my friend.”

It seems that anyone who would fund this kind of garbage talk might have more
money than sense.

------
ksec
>The company, started by former Hyperloop One executives, furloughed all
employees in November while it sought new funding

Slightly off topic: I am seeing a lot more "Startup" having difficulties
getting funding than usual. What is happening to VCs and Silicon Valley?

~~~
lunchbreak
When the Federal reserve lowered interest rates investors had to look for
places to invest their money to make a larger return. Now that rates have
risen there is not as much money flowing to VCs because there are safer -
albeit less profitable - investments

------
syntaxing
Is the drag on a high speed trains mainly inertial or skin (parasitic) or is
it pretty even? I would expect it to be mainly inertial since it's moving at
such a fast speed. If that's the case, isn't there a lot of different
techniques to reduce drag actively and dynamically that they can explore
instead of drawing vacuum?

~~~
tartoran
Would it be feasible to build a system of propellers to take advantage of the
non vacuum on the train itself?

------
joering2
Honest question... idea was based on Elon Musk's papers, who pre-engineer the
thing and even gave it a name. How come he couldn't found it? Last I checked
Musk is worth north of $22 Billion dollars, did the Arrivo management try to
talk him into investment ??

~~~
sqrut
His net worth of $22 billion is in the shares of SpaceX and Tesla he owns, not
cash lying around that he can invest. He actually takes loans against his
shares to pay for his living expenses.

~~~
macspoofing
>He actually takes loans against his shares to pay for his living expenses.

That's how you want to do it, and that's how everyone with the level of net
worth of Musk does it. You don't think, for example, Zuckerberg, sells his FB
shares everytime he buys a house in Hawaii.

------
auslander
What if there is a crash ? In Hyperloop it means vacuum all around, and even
on minor accidents you'll die horrible death :D

