Assessment of Socio-Economic Impacts of Hyperloop Technology on European Trade Routes

Aleksejs Vesjolijs, Yulia Stukalina () and Olga Zervina
Additional contact information
Aleksejs Vesjolijs: Transport and Telecommunication Institute, Accenture, 1 Grand Canal Square, D02 P820 Dublin, Ireland
Yulia Stukalina: Transport and Telecommunication Institute, Accenture, 1 Grand Canal Square, D02 P820 Dublin, Ireland
Olga Zervina: Transport and Telecommunication Institute, 2 Lauvas street, LV-1019 Riga, Latvia

Economies, 2025, vol. 13, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: This study investigates the possible socio-economic impacts of Hyperloop technology on establishing and reshaping EU trade routes. Hyperloop—a novel ultra-high-speed transportation system—demonstrates the capability to achieve supersonic speeds to move cargo and passengers. Delivering goods in a faster and sustainable way could change the existing trade routes and offer new opportunities for the development of international trade. This research focuses on assessing how Hyperloop may influence existing EU trade routes by improving delivery times and reducing energy usage/carbon emissions (these terms will be used interchangeably throughout the paper where both reducing long-terms costs and meeting climate goals are equally impacted by this technology). Further objectives include evaluating potential new trade routes that could emerge due to Hyperloop’s capabilities. In this paper, twelve different scenarios are constructed and compared; these scenarios contain the description of current EU trade routes that could be influenced by Hyperloop and those that could be introduced given the improved delivery times and sustainable business opportunities. The gravity model is proposed and an equation is estimated using the PPML (Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood) method based on Eurostat and IMF open data. Based on the research results, different socio-economic outcomes for different layers of EU trade, including negative and positive impacts, are identified. The findings suggest that deploying Hyperloop technology would result in a 15% increase in exports and a 10% increase in imports for European trade. Both positive and negative socio-economic impacts are identified, highlighting the complexities of adopting such a disruptive technology. The research results could be used in the process of decision-making for estimating risks and performing economic analysis on various aspects of the EU trade policy. The study results could also guide EU decision-makers in assessing the main impacts of Hyperloop technology on the transportation industry, on the environment, and on society, in the context of further developing EU trade routes.

Keywords: digital economy; transportation industry; European trade routes; Hyperloop technology; sustainable transport; socio-economic impacts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/13/3/65/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/13/3/65/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:13:y:2025:i:3:p:65-:d:1603336

Access Statistics for this article

Economies is currently edited by Ms. Hongyan Zhang

More articles in Economies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().