BERLIN - A team of German students competing in Elon Musk's Hyperloop challenge have reached 201 mph in the latest milestone for the superfast transport system.

The team from the Technical University of Munich hit the record speed with a prototype pod in an 0.8-mile tube over the weekend.

It is the first time that a test of the Hyperloop transport system has broken the 200 mph barrier. Musk, the technology billionaire behind Tesla and SpaceX, said it would be possible to reach supersonic speeds on the track.

The Hyperloop is a futuristic mode of transport that levitates on its tracks to theoretically travel at speeds of up to 700mph in a near-vacuum.



Dozens of companies, research groups and student teams are competing to produce a Hyperloop that will be adopted by Musk. He proposed the idea for the superfast transport system back in 2013, and launched a competition for its development in 2015.

The German team, the WARR Hyperloop, was awarded first place in the second stage of the competition at the weekend, fighting off competition from more than 20 student teams from universities in Edinburgh, Warsaw and Zurich.



It will undergo further tests this week. "Might be possible to go supersonic in our test Hyperloop tube, even though it's only 0.8 miles long," said Musk. "Very high acceleration / deceleration needed."

"To be clear, a Hyperloop passenger version wouldn't have intense light strobe effect (just for testing), nor an uncomfortable acceleration. High acceleration only needed because tube is short. For passenger transport, can be spread over 20+ miles, so no spilt drinks."



The previous record speed for a Hyperloop prototype was 192mph. It was set by Hyperloop One, a California start-up with $160m (£123m) in venture capital funding, during the maiden journey of its pod earlier this month.

Musk has recently committed to building his own Hyperloop, proposing that his Boring Company will start to build tunnels for the system. It last week gained approval for a test tunnel 44ft under Los Angeles.

In July, Musk said he had been granted permission to build a Hyperloop that could travel from New York to Washington DC in 30 minutes.

Musk's other moonshot ventures include SpaceX, which hopes to send humans to Mars in the mid-2020s.