Hyperloop Seminar: Insights into Hyperloop Research
Spring Semester 2024
06.05.2024
– Beyond Technology: Advanced Decision-Making in Hyperloop Project Development – Aleksey Vesyoliy
– The European Hyperloop Center – Sascha Lamme
www.hyperloopseminar.org
let’s start with the seminar um short introduction to the seminar um uh as you know um you can ask questions during the seminar we have a Q&A tool that you can take a look at and ask your questions ask your questions also anonymously if you like to um just click the Q&A icon at the the bottom and then you can also up and down vard other questions so look in the frequently to see if there’s any new questions from others that you might like to be answered also the moderators and all the co-hosts now with the um presenters that can also take a look at these questions um when we are answering them but we’ll we’ll ask them to you so you don’t need to read them out yourself um for anybody who doesn’t know there’s a YouTube channel where all the talks are uploaded afterwards you can it’s a great database to have um and we have it also now ordered so you can search search it by topic that’s pretty nice just scan the QR code or take a on the website or any of the LinkedIn posts and you will find this table as well today we have two um hyper experts that we want to interview that have a presentation for us um we’ll start with alexe he’s a PhD candidate and researcher at the transport and Telecommunications Institute in Ria in ltia and he’s talking about Advanced decision makings for hyp Loop Advanced decision making for H project and um he will tell you all about how he’s using AI and all kinds of new methods to look into this so um with that the floor is yours Alexa um I’ll stop sharing my screen so you can start sharing yours okay do so do you see my screen guys Yes sounds perfect okay very good so first of all hi everyone from ltia it’s pretty rainy here uh maybe as usual uh and yeah that’s why we also need hyperloop technology definitely to travel more and not to sit at at homes during um holidays yeah joking of course um but yeah uh so today let’s discuss a little bit decision making in hyper project development so as PhD researcher I have found some interesting um um correlations between hyperloop and modern technology and T hper how hyperloop is uh transforming so um thanks to Lucas for opportunity to participate to share ideas actually this is uh one of my latest paper that is uh also going to be published in uh London uh UK and uh yeah so I anyways would like to get your feedback as well and share kind of my view my finding Maybe you will find it uh useful at some point so uh first of all we will discuss uh actuality motivation uh why actually I started this research and what uh drives me through it uh we will discuss ups and downs of uh hyperloop projects uh recent developments uh spe specifications that are exactly meant for hyperloop uh then we’ll take a look a decision making life cycle discuss ambient Ai and finally get to hyperloop transformation um so in general um why why actually all all all this started and why I started this research because I saw um a lot of challenges a lot of opportunities and problems in hyperloop field in hyperloop industry and uh on the one hand uh we have fantastic uh Frameworks around we have uh European Mobility strategy we have policy and you see that in general hyperloop fits fantastic all these policies so that’s definitely um future of transportation and uh hyperloop technology itself fits European commission goals so it’s already you know we can say that halfway is done so there is understanding from European Union that uh hyperloop is needed and uh uh it definitely raises public opinion raises public acceptance and gives also motivations to researchers such as I uh for example um so um then in the end of uh April there was uh also fantastic publication made by European commission regarding Global Trends to uh 2040 and uh we see that uh in general technological landscape is changing and uh there is more and more AI uh there is more uh transparency in the field and uh overall overall technology is transferring so maybe uh already in uh 15 years uh Europe will look uh even even more different than it is now so for example um European policy makers believe that Fusion of AI and compute Quantum computing will revolutionize science and it will also definitely affect the hyperloop technology uh calculations so in general what’s in the on the horizon right now it’s AI generated uh worlds digital cowork coworkers radical transparency and personal resource allowance according to um European commission Trends and uh here as well is one small important Nuance related to GRE transition which is also set as a goal uh as a goal as a trend and as an aim as well so and that’s why we are here that’s why why we have also hyper liop in place um next uh definitely there is fantastic huge potential for hyperloop technology on uh European level for for example replacement of uh uh local short hoold flights uh um uh say in France or even in Germany I believe for such huge countries uh which is absolutely feasible and good replacement so um then definitely green emissions so sorry carbon neutrality zero emissions it’s also uh what driving uh driving hyper Lo field forward so in general uh we are already on a place where tactics and strategy meets uh the demand the demand from uh people and the demand from policy makers from European Commissioners from European Commissioners so uh and then I started to ask questions I looked actually at situation in hyperloop industry and um say as a passionate hyperloop promoter you know I dream about hyperloop because my PhD is about it so I’m getting to sleep and I think uh what are the news about hyperloop how how to implement and what’s uh going on there and I saw that actually there are also several uh failors of some startups or some projects which make me really unhappy first I was worried but then I saw opportunity and as a research I start start to ask questions so first so actually why projects fail uh why some of them are not successful so and then second question arises so how to make actually implementation successful and what is the root cause what is the root cause for failers then maybe how to build trust in hyperloop because there are a lot of uncertainty and a lot of misunderstanding from from the public imagine even if you talk with intelligent people who are from Academia and who are Business Leaders CEO and companies such as Accenture the law or Evolution and often often you will not find understanding uh for example one of my um supervisors at Accenture uh told me one phrase about hyperloop Alex you know I believe it’s fast there I said well actually hyperloop is meant to operate at a supersonic speed well then and he answered to me well then it’s super fast death you know so that’s that’s how people usually react uh to to hyp I hope I’m wrong but but trust is definitely needed and then the next questions what methods to choose so what methods we can choose actually to make it more successful more transparent and uh final question which really uh uh motivates me brings me passion when when when it will be deployed for commercial use and uh people or will be able to use it so and also where it will happen as well uh then in general let’s see uh economical perspective so on the one hand uh during last 10 years by my calculations there were around at least 15 uh billions of Euros Investments overall in hyperloop technology globally so that’s huge amount uh um some startups failed or some startups switched their focus so literally in in recent years startup lost around uh 1 billion of Euros so that’s a lot so literally that’s like budget for example half budget of small country like lattia so latan budget is not is not large so and uh that of course uh raises even more questions right so why it is happening uh that projects actually fail before they even uh come closer to implement to uh commercial use to implementation so uh there are good news there are bad news and there are okay news so in general what really uh what really makes me a little bit worried on on a hyperloop technology is that hyperloop one uh was shut down in and of 2023 and uh yes that’s definitely sad news because this company was definitely one of the promising but it showed uh already disturbing uh signals for at least one year then uh second new news is uh maybe absolutely not bad it’s just reframing we know that zis hyperloop is changing so they a little bit uh changed focus of production as far as I understand two batteries from hyperloop but I truly hope that they will get full speed back to uh to to hyperloop because they actually one of the most promising developers of people and we have uh definitely good advancements in uh cargo tube uh tomb hard hyperloop Noma as well and other companies I hope I will be able to see cargo tube in action in end of May uh with Lucas but yeah let’s let’s see how it will will go in reality also uh Lucas one question to you should I uh take a look at questions now or after presentation we will do them after the presentation like in 10 minutes or so when you finished all fine okay do super super super yeah so um in general it’s definitely all about science and um the first point which I want to stress actually that uh classical academical approaches they still work because because hyperloop is at some point invention and reintroduction of old Technologies so uh methods uh introduced by such scientist as Mari kuris clov or Franklin or Einstein they still work and they still applicable um but what I what I noticed in hyperloop that actually project management for hyperloop is a little bit different uh from other Innovations first let’s take inventions in iions usually take more than 30 40 years to deliver however for hyperloop it came only 10 years right so 11 years from introduction of technology and from that we have actually huge advancements uh if we take European hyper week there are dozens of teams participate and there are dozens already of pot developed there is understanding from European commission uh there is test track built by China and uh test track builds by India right in India we know there is also very good uh situation that uh they signed agreement with Swiss tube for example so and all this raises actually question so what is difference between classic project management and hyperloop so uh first of all hyperloop uh has a lot of different subsystems components which are subject to change so this means that uh in in case of hyperloop we deal with rapid changes in design rapid changes also in goals in aims sometimes of project same as zeros uh example uh hyperloop itself is disruptive technology and it also uses disruptive technology uh for construction so these contents we cannot exclude from from mathematics engineering complexity so given how many seminars lookas we already uh head on hyperloop topic I think this is the very great illustrations how how complex is hyperloop starting from aerodynamics and other aspects so actually I believe all Engineers are doing fantastic jobs to to deliver Innovation uh Financial demanding 15 billions of Eur already spent one one billion of Euros um say were were were lost so another problematic point or maybe it’s even good I don’t know we can decide later that hyperloop relies heavily on public acceptance so literally no public acceptance project struggles uh then we need to get policy approvals permissions some Innovations don’t don’t need to get permissions at all right but for example in lattia in order to build real Hy loop I already uh talked with uh decision makers and uh there we will definitely need for example to align with rail baltics with the existing infrastructure prod projects where already high in Investments were made so Regional specifications approvals policy that’s um that’s the reality and finally it’s definitely multidisciplinary because each component each subsystem it’s actually uh from from different uh from different discipline and we should not disregard software uh develop Ai and uh cyber security here as well so um then um let’s take a look why hyperloop projects fail it’s maybe a little bit similar or not to to uh to other uh other project types say financial problems lack of planning inconsistency in delivery lack of transparency lack of communication leadership by lack of risk risk assessment and also inadequate stakeholder management so all these aspects um often may make failure but as you see there is uh not real correlation between uh specifics of hyperloop and why projects fail and there is particular reason behind it and um the problem is in decision making one of the H one of the largest problems which I SP in hyper that we are often overwhelmed by hypothetical threats that actually might not NE never happen or they might have happen but there is a chance there is a probability there is mathematics which we need uh to conduct of course and which is conducted by hyperloop developers however these hypothetical threats they have fantastic effect on public opinion so the first thing which ordinary person uh or investor sees in hyperloop is this hypothetical threat that something might happen something might not work people might die there might be I don’t know techn technogen catastrophe whatever so uh even such um such I saw I heard uh such complaints that uh there will be no opportunity to get out of port during uh runtime however it’s not true because actually most of hyperloop companies they devel Vel uh I would say not most but all hyper comp companies which I know at least they develop uh fantastic evacuation mechanism so there is no such risk maybe is but no no no it’s not uh the the largest one and then actually what for example What affected uh hyperloop one or other smaller projects other startups classical leadership bias classical uh planning uh issues classical itional misunderstanding so in the end we see that these shortterm bound threats uh there are very very influential and in reality in reality we come to situation where actually uh underestimating classical project management uh uh issues leads to to project to to project failure and then there is a gap between reality and fear and uh we definitely must make calculations so to understand what is really fear and what is reality so um one one investor can tell you that hyperloop scope yes it’s subject of change and that it is an issue it is a problem but in fact it is not it is super power it is specific of hyperloop and it’s good that it is changing and that the project scope even changes so if you know in advance that it will change then it’s already not uh liability but it is uh advantage and before moving to next slide I actually uh wanted uh to to present uh also methodology of Daniel keman actually he sball Prize winner and he uh died just uh one month ago in on March 27 so his his studies and his findings in decision making uh influenced a lot uh a lot my research and T framework which I developed it kind of uses also ideas of Sir Conan so and um how to assess how to assess all these problematic pollings of hyperloop with potential success so first of all first of all reality check and uh active reframing repurposing of project so technically if uh classical In classical project managing management we have start of the project finish of the end of the project then new life cycle begins but still it is the same project in hyperloop we might work with completely different project and the thing is that project goal and project aim at uh hyperloop could change and might change several times uh during project implementation so for example maybe uh Lucas later you can share insights about uh Institute of European of hyper technology or any of you guys want to share your insights but what at least um uh I observed that uh reframing and refocusing project is the key and uh project managers must not be afraid of it instead utilizing its power uh then also hyperloop depends heavily on blind spots that’s also actually related to canan’s methodology uh at some point and um there is also fantastic practice F fantastic method it’s called decision making SWAT analysis not classical SWAT analysis but which is related decision related exactly to decision making making one one point Alexi I think if you want to do questions then we need to finish up in the next three to five minutes yeah yeah okay sure yeah so I will uh yeah speed up so in general um first of all team should be prepared for change so the problem is that Workforce Team guys uh sorry not guys but uh colleagues with whom you work must be ready uh to change and to understand that uh they might have to rescue in order for hyper project to be successful next um say a recommendation adopt agile met ology same as software uh management software development uh management so that will that allows actually to change project scope and project uh requirements during Project Life Cycle that is fantastic for hyperloop um then uh in general what’s the main idea in blind spot blind spot uh Matrix and uh blind spot analysis that our goal as hyperloop uh stakeholders is to find first unknown strength of project and second uh what we actually already know about the project what what is uh visible in terms of hyperloop implementation what are its strong Parts such as speed zero emission or carbon neutral but the idea is to understand strength and weaknesses which are unknown to us which we do not see as project leaders project manager and finally uh ambient AI is a fantastic tool to integrate with hyperloop not tool it’s of course it’s system actually it’s digital system and uh it’s related to environment where people are surrounded uh with networks and uh ambed intelligence uh technically system reacts actually to presence of people and creates personalized Transportation experience uh in case of hyper that is actually our case and um final maybe slide is uh related to transformation of hyperloop what I see is very good tendency what I see is a trend that hyperloop becomes not just a technology it becomes technology plus philosophy philosophy how philosophy how to deliver inventions uh to reality of course for that we will need uh to conduct final step to deploy uh hyperloop commercial use but I believe it will be done in in upcoming years um so yeah and uh all these principles which I mentioned to you such as rapid change adaptation Workforce transformation ambient Ai and also sustainable by Design its principles of uh hyperloop Philosophy for approach uh in in um in in say decision making and delivery of Innovations also thanks to my supervisor Professor Saras and to The Economist actually which course I attended regarding critical thinking and which motivated me to undertake all this study so and thank you to you Lucas and to the whole uh team and to everyone who listened and yeah participate thank you oh thanks Alexa great to have your presentation here and I will also already start reading you the first question so first question was from Alfred he was asking what are your answers for your questions on why hyp Loop projects fail uh so uh I I would say because of project planning and uh uh because uh project team usually is more affected by hypothetical threats which will happen in the in the future and adjusting project goals project aims and project specification to it rather to stick for example uh uh to some risk related exactly to team to project management how to uh create uh competitive cohering team how to uh ensure good communication between board members so some project just closes because there is conflict inside the board so that’s just a risk which all of us must under think and must realize and such small risks they sometimes make fatal blows to to the projects yeah then I there’s there’s one question I really like um it’s from Zack he’s writing if you could have a magic want what does the hyperloop industry need today to be supported and committed um by government or developers operators so what would be the the one point that you could throw into your decision making that way just rup Tye Loop um I would say hyperloop technology integration in in related with uh safety first uh so magic want would be to remove I would remove with magic want safety concerns if if uh if I would have such uh superpower to build more trust more public acceptance into into technology so that’s that’s the crucial point in my opinion I like that quite much see that with other trans modes as well that’s nice um and the last one will the decision making for high be different on different continents uh that’s another fantastic question um it might be so actually uh I did huge research on transparency of hyperloop project and uh there is clear deviation between uh European project and and a US project like Western project and for example uh projects from uh China or India or even Japan so for example much more information much more um is available from European stakeholders and that’s very good I believe that’s uh Way Forward way of cooperation so I would promote this approach uh but I would definitely deal with regional policies Regional regulations Frameworks which for example uh affect some specific countries like uh China or Japan for example so definitely there are different regulations and uh it it must be taken into account but I would I would say that uh the way forward is cooperation and the way forward is also transparency which is uh which correlates with European projects okay very nice thanks thanks a lot for those answers thank you very much for your presentation it was uh great to see it and to listen to you and now we can hand over to Zasha to start sharing the screen thank you but I think we’ve beforehand have a little bit of an introduction from yon right yes yes thanks Lucas H thank you for the presentation also Lex um yeah just quickly want to introduce Sasha he’s the director of the European ey group Center he also a co-founder of heart hyperloop so he has been with heart for seven years and developing company from small startup to now well let’s say quite established company um so yeah from the I he’s become the director of the European houp Center um which is a large test facility which was recently realized he’ll talk about more um and in addition he’s also part of the hybrid development program which is a let’s say an open International Network for H development and the European H Center is the test facility of this program so um yeah without further you uh thank you Sasha for preparing something and yeah I’ll give the the word to you thank you Yuan for this uh introduction very flustering I don’t think I’ve ever been introduced like this great I do my best thanks so much um check well then I also don’t have to do my own introduction anymore thank you for the invite I put some slides together I hope it interests uh all of you but please also ask questions I think that’s why I’m mostly here to explain to you what we have done what the result is of the European Hy Loop Center and what we have learned throughout the throughout the process so let me share my screen yeah so the European Hy Center um was Slash is a project initiated by heart hard hyp Loop in 2019 uh completed a first first 30 m test facility um in Del the Netherlands was the first yeah fully integrated technology demonstrator of Hy plop that was that was realized it had a it had a tube tracks a vehicle um but clearly in 30 MERS you cannot really go fast so then the idea was to develop a next test facility where we could test the Technologies at a at a higher speed Fe and to achieve this um we um yeah started looking for a location for a test track and started thinking about what this test track should look like Etc and I will take you a little bit to what to to what we have done so actually a lot of things that were said in the previous presentation I can uh I can relate relate to because yeah goals of the or the purpose of setting up the European Hy Loop Center were yeah to facilitate of course the reach and development of of the high blop system to test Technologies to demonstrate Technologies to develop and demonstrate a full a full system but a very important aspect also in our opinion is the realization or the yeah the adoption of the system by the public and then I mean public in the broader sense you know the general public is the people that we speak to every every day but also Regional National and European governments and institutes so we didn’t only want to realize the test facility that was for you know providing an a platform for H Loop developers to test our vehicle guideway and other components of the hyp loop uh but also provide a place where people could interact touch learn see the uh what hyp Loop is BAS basically um currently it’s still a wide empty tube but we don’t want to only look what’s happening inside the technology or inside the tube but also very much what’s happening outside and with the the tube or the or or the test track so those are some of the the goals that we set out with then initially we uh started looking for a place actually in the Netherlands we organized a little competition we had different High different provinces within the Netherlands make a bid to host the European HP Center and then we first ended up in the municipality of cronia all the way up in the north of the Netherlands um in a yeah basically a big farm Fields just outside of the city and that’s immediately where all the problems started realizing in European H Center because even though there was only six or seven people living outside the facility everyone started objecting to to the uh the European High Center coming there and so after lots of meetings with a lot of local stakeholders we actually moved to a new location in fenam it’s a small city outside of the uh city of coron but still in the province of coron where we now have a yeah basically a test site on an industrial terrain so no stuff with pyramids we’re all have we’re quite far from all types of people so there we could just do uh do our thing um I’ll get later back to to to some of the lessons but initially when we started the project we wanted to realize a 2.7 kilm test track uh 1.4 meter in diameter reason being 1.4 meter was like a pipe for gas or water you could get off the shelf very easily and the goal was really to test high speeds just the Technologies lightweight vehicle really test the uh test the high speeds at that point we didn’t the funding yet to realize the facility um that played a role in what happened after but we have gone through very many scope changes so uh first was is the technology demonstrator then we wanted to develop a product just for cargo then we thought maybe we should do something for passengers and now we’re back at basically a larger scale but shorter technology platform where people can test all types of of system substance system Etc um but we came to the following yeah requirements specifications it’s a test facility for high plop with a low pressure environment that can reach up to one mbar roughly should allow for testing up to 100 kilm an hour with vehicles that weigh approximately 3,000 kilogram it allows for EMS on the top levitation and onboard propulsion of course very important uh and unique of the about the European hyp Center is it is it Lane switching capabilities but there are some things that people might not know it also allows for testing of New guideway Concept so there’s a section you can take out and you can for example instead of the steel tube you have now you can put in a new type of guideway from concrete or another material or another type of structure allows for different type of subsystem Technologies so maybe within the vehicle you can use the vehicle that’s there to test your typ batteries new types of sensors you know that’s all open and open for all the other hyb companies but also Industries to test their Technologies um and the European hybs that also allowed to upgrade So currently there’s quite some systems that are not included yet think for example of cooling or charging uh we now are using quite a rudimentary communication system so there’s quite some upgrades still possible that can be done uh and then to conclude it has this commun there is a communication system in place so if people just want to come with a with a test vehicle you know there’s the basics are there for people to just come with a vehicle and test so in 2025 we also want to support the European Hy week and then students can come and test in the European Hy Center maybe not full length but absolutely uh a part of it just depending on how ready the the teams are yeah and then all the what we eventually realize is for 20 met test facility 2.5 met in diameter so it does allow for cargo demonstration like pallet size package maybe it would fit passengers uh it would be a little bit cramped but that’s something that we are looking into um so yeah that’s basically what we set out to to realize with this with this project I’m sure most of you have seen the pictures so this what it currently currently looks like so you have the the test track with the uh the y shape and the switch at the at the end um it’s each pipe is I’ll get back to that later then we have the the control room this is also a little Fister area we have the in brown our vacuum pump system and we also have place for a workshop in which people can do maintenance store set test setups uh maintain your vehicles you name it and then we have still quite some space Also next to the track for few future additions to the uh to the system there’s some more pictures from from other directions so here you can actually also see it’s on an industrial terrain so we didn’t have too much permitting issues here which helped a lot of realize realize the project here top view again with um here this is2 m of uh of of switch and just to give people an indication just this switch Parts um cost more than all of the infrastructure combined so by the switch is by far the most expensive per per meter to realize then to give people also kind of an indication what we started with so when we kick started the project we had in mind 25 million eventually the infrastructure was realized within s and a half this is not all the R&D done by Hearts to develop to develop the system uh the initial timeline well we started in q1 2020 we wanted to have the facility done by Q2 2023 in the end you know it’s now there q1 2024 so we had about nine months of of delay which were mostly because of the yeah permitting issues we had in the another in the other location uh here in the north of of coronia but but also played a big roles just not having the funding and to to actually start precuring all the parts we actually started when the funding was uh closed we started in Q4 2022 um and then within one and a half year year we actually finished the construction of the whole facility and what went very quickly is the on side construction So within three months um for the people that don’t know uh how the European hybrid Center was built is basically uh you have 60 M pipe Elements which are pre fabricated with all the tracks uh and everything inside the pipe and then they’re just put on a truck shipped to a fom and then installed so they installed two pipes basically one pipe per hour so really the Bott neck was just the supply of prefabricated pipe but the onside construction went incredibly incredibly fast that to give you kind of an indication of what it looks on the inside like said 420 M the switch is 120 m in in length this switch was actually initially designed to allow also for highspeed switching might we want to extend this into the future to a 700 kilm test track you can take this switch also at 700 kilometers an hour and 300 kilometers an hour and yeah so what you see at the top here the schematic and here in real life of course the levitation tracks which are used for levitation system then here in the middle of the three tracks on the side you have the the guidance track on both sides for lateral stabilization also taking of the of the lane switch which seems simply works by using an EMS magnet which will follow the left side if it wants to take the left switch and it will turn on its right magnet if it wants to take the the right switch then we have here on top of the side switch is the propulsion track with a barcode sensor for the positioning of the of the vehicle and it is a um a reluctance motor with the uh short stor on board of the of the vehicle so the entire infrastructure is is passive and then to conclude at the bottom we have what we call the vpss it’s basically safety rail which has multiple functions such as um catching the system if the vehicle Falls because of levitation failure but it’s also an emergency uh braking track and on top of that is also a switch card so might levitation or guidance F in the switch the vehicle will always be guided into one of the two pipes and never ENT into the middle with this this track so this is safe ra with multiple with multiple functions here you have a have a side view um in the end the whole infrastructure was built within very tight tolerances so we are speaking about you know things sub uh over a pipe length of 60 M within 2 mm uh where the steps between tracks are even smaller those are sh millimeter tolerances so it was bu all quite and it was quite a challenge to achieve those but in the end we came pretty close like I think in most of place we met all those I’ve met all those tolerances and some more pictures of the of the inside what that looks like so here you have the last of the linear pipes so the linear pipes are just the standard 16 M pipes that we Mass produce and then from here on onward you see the double track that’s where the switch starts so where the track starts widening um and then well on the right picture you actually see that slowly but surely here at the end I have another picture you see you really see the um the system diverge and in the switch we also have a catch Flor because there the vehicle cannot hang on the on two sides on this sketch rail so that it actually falls on the falls on the floor what you see for example as well as here the the Expansion Joints that we have built so I think every 60 MERS roughly there’s an expansion joint for the for the thmo expansion and this is also then within the tracks you can see there’s quite some gaps that the system can overcome and where necessary we have these fingers like in ordinary infrastructure for when the vehicle sliding and then besides the infrastructure we also have some addal facilities I already said we have a nice Workshop some storage of course a control room meeting room Etc the vacuum system um initially we wanted to have an airlock um but because of supplier issues and challenges we uh still don’t have a gate valve So currently we have to repressurize the whole the whole system this is what it looks like a little bit a little bit closer um and then of course we also have the the vacuum system actually quite a simple bu pump that allows us I think roughly within eight to 10 hours to uh to bring this system to one mbar and the testing is uh supposed to happen actually quite soon so then we can see if we actually reach those those low pressures um well the control room is very simple it’s just some laptops that uh that can control the control the system um yeah so that in a in a very quick overview what we done there were like a couple of lessons that I wanted to even though I didn’t really have the time to go into quite some details but we can discuss further looking back at the project what really made it challenging is first of all these scope changes that I already said in the in the beginning you know we had so many scope changes which made the whole project um slow down a lot of work had to be done over over quite a couple of a couple of times and I think even now with the European Hy Center finished we might not have considered what we really needed early enough so I would really suggest everyone developing High flop to know don’t rush into all the technical details too soon but really think about what it is that the industry needs uh that we as as Hy developers need um looking at the European hyp it can achieve a lot you can do a lot with it there’s lots of Technology testing that we can do but for example the fact that we are now with a 2.5 meter pipe which is might maybe just too small for example for passenger testing um that’s just a Pity where if we maybe had earlier thought about okay what are all the things you want to do you know in 204 moving forward and we thought of okay it would make sense to also allow for best testing at one point we might have decided to make it a bit bigger you know so really think about all the things you want to do with the test track with the test facility in the in the long run where of course the challenge is to not think too big like we also did you know in the beginning we wanted to create 2.7 kilometers but we s simply didn’t have the funding so don’t think too big but do think about the the uh the long term um then I also added the other one think slow access maybe people recognize from how big things get done really nice book by the way um know we we rushed into a location this location was offered to us in nearon we should have spent a lot more time doing our due diligence on this location and because then we would have figured out that it was far from ideal so really spending enough time picking the location talking to the stakehold before committing to a region uh you know identifying all the risks solving those getting proper experts involved that know what what the challenges are with infrastruct with building public with building infrastructure in the public environment absolutely recommended um so yeah start at the end mind think slow fast you know then at some point if you got everything set just go and um it Al that will also allow you to go fast you have everything figured out from the beginning then a second lesson is we never really thought of the difference between R&D and Engineering so we just headed out with this project having basically never done something like this before so a lot of this systems were just developed from scratch never done before that made the project very difficult to plan because no one really know what would work what would not work so throughout the manufacturing throughout the design everyone was just learning it was it was really R&D while the stakeholders of the project were you know used to regular project engineering like building a highway like building rail infrastructure where people have done this many many many many times before so you know the cost you kind of know what you’re going to run into this is very different um and this also made it quite difficult to sometimes work with suppliers where the suppliers were very much expecting an engineering project but it was very much still an R&D project and just realizing what your project is if it’s an R&D project or an Eng engineering projects will also help you find the right Partners manage your stakeholders and properly help you with how you set up your project management Etc I do think by the way for really big projects and then well European High Center is not even that big although it’s on the bigger side these are not the size of projects that you really can do in an R&D type of fashion you know there’s just too many um just the amount of money becomes too much for things to be kind of fluid and just to discover stuff on the fly so a more a more proper engineering approach a proper project management is really in place here where you need to kind of solve all the technology risk before you start a project like this so build a lot of prototypes you know maybe we should have build a 16m pipe one time that we kind of knew what all the problems were going to be during assembly I would really recommend to do all the R&D before you start a project like this then the final final summary a final lesson learned is we try to realize this project in meot but even in this location the fact that everyone from the public sector is so unfamiliar with the system made it very difficult to um get the permits go through the the formal processes um even um in a site that had very little problems this was a really really big challenge um and especially more within the other location which was actually in a more public environment like all the people living around facility they were all envisioning these Doom scenarios where the whole pipe would explode or Vehicles would shoot out of the facility like a cannon and hit their building it’s know I think most people here are Engineers but I greatly overestimated maybe um how well people knew the system or uh how much they would accept the system we all know it’s very silent you know everything’s protected in this point but people were quite scared simply because it’s new um and that’s something we should absolutely not underestimate so really getting this public adoption and learning people how to deal with the system I think it’s very very important um not but not only with you know the people living around but also with regional national government Etc because they simply don’t know what the risks are how to provide permits for a facility facility like this and then can take a lot of time and then the next steps um maybe I should actually start with this one so currently har is preparing their test vehicle uh the plan was actually by the end of ail to come testing but they’re still commissioning some of the propulsion propulsion systems and so somewhere in may we expect them to come uh come to the European hyb Center and test with their test vehicle so that’s going to be quite exciting um but besides that like I said in the beginning the facility is not only Built for testing stuff in the pipe but also testing stuff outside of the pipe so we’re setting up projects with the uh local universities um to for example see if we can package the pipe with uh green stuff maybe with some architecture to see how can we make this pipe look better and also make it more more acceptable to the to the environment um yeah that’s it I spoke 30 minutes two minutes left so oh very good yeah I think you managed to squeeze in a lot of good insights which I think are usable uh I know you had a little time to prepare so I think you uh did a good job um I I see we have quite a bit of questions still uh from back so I’m just going to pick a few that uh interest me as well and we’ll go to G for some closing stag um so one question I see uh you mentioned think about what the industry needs before you built um and if you have some examples of it and then what I would add there also you have examples of things we did that the industry didn’t need that might have caused some complications good question uh especially the second part so but I’ll start with the easy question yeah I already get one example so I think what we need is or what we didn’t consider was the passenger aspect um we we were very much focused on just getting a product to Market as quickly as possible cargo seemed logical at the time but looking back you should have maybe put it in a in a bit broader sense um some other things which I think we just kept aside which just made our life easier are for example low speed Corners uh everyone is focusing on straight tubes straight testing that’s the easiest but really Corners I would say is also an interesting one um air dos how do you board unboard a system like this I think the we tend to focus on those systems for which we have quite an easy solution at hand and then just realize this well actually as an industry we should probably be focusing on the difficult parts and solve those first because if we can find a solution for those difficult parts then it’s never going to work and then building the easy part you know we are we we’re probably going to solve those easy things anyway let’s focus on the difficult ones and identifying those yeah I think even easy ones can turn out to be that is true that is true yes also about designing such a facility for highp Speed and all the track alignment tolerances that come with it there was extremely challenging to get L you know you do learn a lot so um I saw some other questions uh yeah you also already spoke about it a little bit but uh there’s a question about if uh the infrastructure at the EAC allows for passenger safety procedure um it does have manholes but those are mostly for maintenance purposes um we have looked into doing maybe upgrades to the European Hy Center to allow this type of testing currently it is not possible so but with upgrades it is like you can make upgrades you can walk into the European hybri Center we have actually taken quite some people into the European hybrid center from our first feasibility study it is possible to do upgrades to test these types of things but it would require some additional investment into the infrastructure okay sounds good um then maybe one final question is if there were any easy Technical Solutions that surprised you because of the simp implementation um I guess the question what was easier than expected to real um I haven’t I’m I’m not that involved into the engineering if find a bit difficult to answer this question um yeah I think what’s what what the easiest I already said it in the presentation but really the on-site construction was by far went way faster and was way easier than we expected like we had planned to install one pipe a day or two pipes a day the contractor that we had hired said well we could have done eight per day and they were actually quite disappointed by the fact how simple and easy it was to put these pipes in place connect them Etc um so that’s big Advantage uh downside you need to do a lot more Preparatory work in the in the in the factory but of course that’s a controlled environment so know looking at head building something modular building something modular again a tip from how big things get done not sure people have read it but definitely read it for everyone doing project management and that helped a lot yeah yes um yeah I’m thinking I think we’re pressed for time so we’ll have to leave open I think you can always reach out to us yes questions come up you know for for that um so I believe Gabrielle you have some uh closing statements for us yes I think Lucas had to leave on time so he asked me to just thank everybody in particular the two speaker Alexi and Sasha thank you very much uh for the presentation thank you very much also to everybody else that was here on a Monday evening in particular was holiday in your in your country then particular thank you and uh the next seminar is next week again on Monday um 6:00 pm. and we’re going to have mahmed Aras to I assume present the work that they are doing there in turkey and probably also the whole Turkish ecosystem um where a lot of things are happening and a lot of steams are also will be taking part in the European High week from what I’ve seen are also from Turkey so he will present all of this perfect then thank you very much again everybody and have a good evening