Our Crowdfunding Groups
Crowdfund UC Davis thanks all of the donors who gave to this important project in February. This campaign has closed, but you can still support our program by making a donation.
With five years in the making and still going strong, OneLoop is a student organization continuing to develop the ecologically mindful hyperloop pod. This year the team is working towards competing within European Hyperloop Week, a competition meant to showcase our team’s current iteration of our working hyperloop pod design. With the introduction to our new developments on our linear induction motor, a propulsion system that is able to convert electricity into electromagnetic forces, our team needs funding to manufacture this complex component.
OneLoop is composed of 70 students - each from different backgrounds and a studying variety of different engineering disciplines. Our strength comes from our close collaboration with one another, while still maintaining the ability to separate ourselves into multiple sub-teams in order to form a cohesive pod design. We pride ourselves in educating new recruits. OneLoop serves as a learning ground for young engineers looking to apply their newfound knowledge and apply it to design tangible and complex systems. Our experienced members serve as mentors for newer recruits, teaching them about the vastly differing components while setting them on a path to continue years in the future when they reapply the skills they have learned from this team. Additionally, we work closely with industry professionals, reaching out to many companies in order to gather both technical assistance and financial support. We are grateful to be supported by these companies and continue to establish ourselves in in industry.
We care about the quality of our design and go deep into research in order to optimize each component of the pod. Many of our sub-teams spend hours upon hours testing these components by running them through simulation programs provided by our sponsors as well as physically running experiments measuring the durability, safety, and functionality of our pod.
About the fund
OneLoop intends to continue iterating and revising our hyperloop pod as we learn more about how to advance the system. These funds by the crowdfunding are intended for the team to purchase equipment and other components that will be used in modifying current subsystems we currently have. Some examples of our advancement of the pod include substituting the chassis of the pod with carbon fiber strengthened by liquid epoxy. Through our research and testing we have come to find that these materials in combination retain many of the same compressive strengths as steel but have an added bonus being lightweight and flexible. The support of our team and research would mean that we will be able to continue to develop these custom components that ultimately may be utilized in future systems and technological innovations.
What’s the importance of hyperloop?
The core of the hyperloop design is very simple: it is a vacuum tube with a high speed pod inside, allowing for low cost, high speed direct route transportation. Despite the simplicity however, its implications are far-reaching; the hyperloop will be the greenest form of high speed transportation in its class, and current designs plan to offset its already low CO2 emissions with solar panels lining the tube. Cheaper to build and operate than competing technologies, the hyperloop is poised to slash not only greenhouse gas emissions, but also the number of hours Americans spend commuting, increasing quality of life and productivity throughout.
For example, the average person’s carbon footprint for a one-way flight from San Francisco to LA is 0.04 metric tons of CO2e per person. The average 18-wheeler truck for the same route creates about 0.66 metric tons of CO2e. Since hyperloop uses solar energy to power its pods, transportation induced CO2e emissions could be reduced by thousands of metric tons each year on this route alone. Implementing the same green technology elsewhere would therefore have a tremendous environmental impact. Additionally, the proposed $20 ticket for a 30 minute trip from San Francisco to LA would save millions of commuting hours annually - the 6 hour drive one-way would be a thing of the past, allowing that time to be put toward more meaningful endeavors.
If you have any questions about the team or about our project, you can reach us through our email (davishyperloop@gmail.com)
