Something’s going on at Virgin Hyperloop, the startup attempting to bring Elon Musk’s vision of high-speed trains to life. In the last few weeks, the company quietly changed its names. Hyperloop OneThe brand it used from 2016 to 2017. Its website was also cleaned up using an outdated stock image. XP-1 test pod and the claim that “It’s a new day at Hyperloop One,” too.
This isn’t just a website issue, as the Twitter, LinkedInAnd InstagramAccounts have all been reverted to their old logo and names. And the change has to be fairly recent — Tweet posted October 22ndIt still had the Virgin logo, name and trademark. We don’t know what caused the change but it is clear that this was a deliberate effort to de-brand. Seems like Richard Branson or Virgin no longer want to share a brand name with the logistics company.
There have been many changes at the company this year. 111 people were laid off and its headquarters was abandoned. The much-hyped effort to create a passenger network. DP World, majority owner, said that it would shift to using the technology for logistics to construct “inland ports” to transport cargo containers faster than the existing system.
In the hopes of getting clarification from Virgin, Hyperloop One, and (partner) DP World, we have reached out. We will update this post if we hear back.
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