Elon Musk's Hyperloop To Become Reality With Planned California Test Track

Elon Musk's Hyperloop will soon move from concept to reality in California, according to the Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT). The company, which was created last year, said it will build a functioning test track for the high-speed transport tube in California by 2019.

HTT reportedly said it has completed a deal with a central California-based developer to build a five-mile Hyperloop track along Interstate 5 in Quay Valley, a city located roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The company said that construction will start in 2016 and be completed three years later.

"This is big step," Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of the JumpStartFund, which created Hyperloop Transportation Technologies last year, told CNBC. "It's time to take the Hyperloop from concept and design and build the first one."

The Hyperloop concept was laid out in a white paper by Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla Motors Inc. and SpaceX, two years ago. It called for a series of vacuum tubes laid out from San Francisco to LA, transporting people in magnetically-propelled capsules at upwards of 800 miles per hour.

Less than two months after Musk unveiled his idea, HTT was founded by JumpStarter Inc. using a crowdfunding model. The company is powered by about 100 engineers employed elsewhere who spend their free time on the Hyperloop project in exchange for stock options, according to Wired.

Although Musk had originally said that he did not have time to work on the Hyperloop or fund its creation, last month, he said he was targeting Texas for a potential test site.

Ahlborn told CNBC the project was a “phased process,” and that his company had done “feasibility studies and now … will be able test all aspects of the Hyperloop," adding that the project was estimated to cost $100 million. HTT will raise the funds with an initial public offering, or IPO, in the third quarter of this year, he said.