Gas-Powered Bike Hyperloop

Google's Larry Page Wanted to Build a Gas-Powered Bike Hyperloop

The 'bikerloop' startup would have sent bikers speeding through a tunnel with artificial wind at their backs.

By Avery Thompson
GETTY IMAGES/KIMBERLY WHITE

Alphabet CEO Larry Page has long spent his free time investing in questionable transportation startups. A few years ago, news broke that Page was investing in not one, but two flying car startups, and now Bloomberg is reporting that the executive had a third startup under his care: a company called Heliox that envisioned a sort of hyperloop for bikers that would propel them along with gas pressure.


According to Bloomberg, Heliox was a small operation working out of an unused airplane hangar. The concept was simple yet absurd: Bicyclists would cruise along inside an airtight tube while high-pressure gas created a wind pushing the cyclist from behind. The company wanted to build a long tube from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to downtown San Francisco.

The company didn’t get very far in their plan, however, before shutting down. Heliox managed to build a small prototype tunnel in their airplane hangar about the width of a subway car, and was using a mixture of oxygen and helium to propel passengers. However, at some point between 2015 and now the company and the project were abandoned.

It’s unlikely that Page will ever revisit the idea, which might be bad news for small group of people who wanted to superbike between San Francisco and Mountain view. But it’s probably for the best. We have enough unbuilt hyperloops as it is.

Source: Bloomberg