$10 million in tax breaks approved for Hyperloop

Nevada’s economic development board Friday approved $10 million in tax breaks for Hyperloop Technologies, which is designing a space-age, high-tech system for moving people and cargo at hundreds of miles per hour.

Hyperloop would work similar to the now ancient system businesses used to use to move paperwork through four-inch diameter copper tubes inside a building using compressed air to push a capsule from one place to another.

Only Hyperloop would use huge diameter tubes to move cargo and people in pods levitated by magnets and pushed through a tube electrically at speeds upward of 300 miles an hour.

Company officials say they hope eventually to reach speeds of up to 700 mph.

In trade for tax abatements of sales, business and personal property taxes plus a Catalyst Fund grant of $750,000, the company agreed to invest $121.6 million in a research, technical development and testing site at Apex, the industrial center located in Southern Nevada that will also be home to electric auto maker Faraday.

As part of the deal, the firm will hire 89 people, mostly engineers, with average salaries of more than $29 an hour. The company also provides extensive health and other benefits to employees.

According to Hyperloop officials, they expect to have a kilometer-long track set up to test their electric propulsion system by November.