The Virgin Hyperloop company has laid off 111 of its employees after abandoning the idea of developing its system for passenger transport.
In accordance with Financial Timesthe company is now focused only on freight transport, which is why it has almost halved the number of workers on its staff.
According to a Virgin Hyperloop spokesperson, part of this business turnaround is due to supply chain issues and the coronavirus pandemic.
The official explained that these cuts will allow the firm “to respond more quickly and more economically”, in addition to ruling out that this decision to fire so many people has been “taken from memory”.
Since it was born, the main plan of this company was to develop a system of vacuum tubes that would allow passengers and goods to be transported.
The company had even already done tests with humans and managed to reveal its ambitious conceptual plans, which came to excite the public.
Now, Virgin Hyperloop is negotiating with 15 potential clients for cargo transportation. One of them would be the Saudi Arabian government, which plans to build a connecting route between the port city of Jeddah and the capital Riyadh.
“It is quite clear that potential customers are interested in goods, while passengers are a bit further away,” the Financial Times report notes.
In any case, everything indicates that the ultra-fast underground transport announced by Virgin Hyperloop in 2017 will still have to wait a couple of years to be available.
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