Six Reasons why TU Munich keeps winning the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition and what this taught me about Innovation [Part 1]
The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition is an annual competition held in Los Angeles, California since 2017. Goal of the competition is to run a so-called “Hyperloop Pod” along a 1.2 km depressurized tube as fast as possible. Every year around 30 student teams from all over the world qualify for the final week, with the last day of competition seeing the teams boiled down to the Top 3.
In 2017 I was part of Technical University of Munich’s (TUM) winning Hyperloop team. Two competitions later TUM Hyperloop is still the undisputed champion setting speed records at 324 km/h (201 mph) during 2017’s second competition and 467 km/h (290 mph) in 2018. It came as a surprise to many that in light of rapid advances in this new technology and the fiercest global competition imaginable TU Munich would repeatedly emerge victorious.
Having been part of the original team and having closely observed the successive competitions, I derived six main reasons for TU Munich’s success, which I believe can be related to broader lessons for innovation projects as well.
Surprisingly, none of these reasons can be directly backtracked to the consumption of Bavarian beer, even though some would say that most of the Bavarian people’s genius stems from its regular consumption 😉.
#1 — Resilience
This summer TUM Hyperloop celebrated their most decisive win: Their pod reached a high-speed of 467 km/h and successfully stopped on the 1.2 km track. To put these numbers into context: Second came Delft University from the Netherlands with 142 km/h and third the Swiss Team EPFLoop with 85 km/h.
As big as this lead might seem — as close it was to fail. When I came to Los Angeles on Thursday before the competition the team was riding the struggle train. They had just completed a first test on a 50-metre track outside of SpaceX Headquarters and discovered some significant issues with their pod’s motors.
After going back to their Garage, where they had been working on the pod day and night for the past two weeks, they immediately started to disassemble the whole pod. The team checked the brakes and other hardware parts and relentlessly tried to find a working motor parametrization. After running tests until 4 am they tried to catch some sleep, only to walk straight back into the garage again at 7 am to get the pod ready for the first open tube run — a run in the actual hyperloop tube, but with open doors and no negative pressure — on Friday.
Two runs later disappointment hit the team again: the motors shut off after a short acceleration phase. Another night and day of parameter tweaking later, the team could test their pod again on Saturday evening. But still the motors didn’t work as expected. 12 hours before the final competition, where thousands of people and Elon Musk himself would watch the pod perform — the day they had been working towards for over a year — they did not know if they could make it.
After two weeks that started with intercontinental travel and featured little to no sleep with constant monitoring of the competition, they had one more night to give it their all and get the pod working.
A few hours later the final and most critical run was there — the pod had been loaded to the tube, the doors were closed and the tube had been depressurized. Nobody knew, if the motors would finally work. Martin, the technical lead counted down from three and the pod was rushing down the tube.
On the big screen some hundred people watched in excitement. They could see the pod was fast — but nobody knew how fast. Apparently the communication from the pod to the screen, which would be streaming its speed to the audience wasn’t working. A few moments later the pod stopped.
Everyone was waiting for SpaceX to announce the final speed. When the result was finally called out the joy was overwhelming: 467 km/h or 290 mph meant an uncontested first place. The team’s passion and resilience had overcome all setbacks and moments of frustration, which culminated in a successful outcome.
What did this teach me?
Innovation needs resilience. In every innovation project you are poised to experience frequent setbacks and frustration, things not working as expected and failures that seem near impossible to come back from. In these times you have to remain resilient and keep on trying until you succeed.
#2 — People
Most of the teams competing in the Hyperloop competition consist of highly interdisciplinary and international members. There are students from many faculties like physics, mechanical and electrical engineering, informatics, business, communications and often even creative arts.
However, there is something that slightly sets apart TUM Hyperloop from other teams: An environment of highly experienced people, who are exceptionally good at organizing and carrying out innovation projects.
To understand this point we have to look back at the history of TUM Hyperloop and consider its origins. When Mariana Avezum, the founder of the team, read about the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition she got really excited and started looking for people to join her. Since SpaceX is a rocket company and Hyperloop could also easily be described as rocket science the idea to approach the Chair of Astronautics of TU Munich, led by the former astronaut Prof. Walter, was not far. The Chairs’ employees introduced her to the association of WARR — the scientific workgroup for rocketry and spaceflight. This student association was already founded in 1962 because of the lack of a chair for space technology in Munich back then.
Members of WARR have already worked on countless innovation projects such as hybrid rockets, satellites, space exploration, or even a space elevator. Enthusiastic about this new opportunity WARR supported Mariana’s idea, which instantly gave them access to a professional working environment with lots of experience in various other student competitions. Alongside with WARR many experienced students joined the team, which over time grew from 7 founding members to 45 in total. This jump-start in resources and organization gave TUM Hyperloop an unquestionable advantage for the first competition and the team managed to maintain this advantage ever since.
What did this teach me?
Innovation projects need the right people and infrastructure. A good mix between interdisciplinarity, curiosity and experience in the team is crucial, but equally important is a strong entity or organization backing the endeavor.
#3 — Time
Time is another crucial factor for TUM Hyperloop’s success. I remember the countless hours of designing, tinkering, testing, and building I spent on the magnetic levitation system of the first Hyperloop Pod. So did the whole team, sacrificing more than their spare time to design and build the Pod — some even taking a whole semester (or more) off to work on the project.
The same commitment was also present in the latest team. Since I occasionally work in the same workshop — UnternehmerTUM’s Makerspace — there was not any time of day or night where one could not see at least a couple of team members working on the pod.
Does this mean that all the other teams are just lazy and simply do not spend as much time as TUM Hyperloop on their project? Certainly not. When I visited the competition this year I saw a lot of enthusiastic and committed students from around the world with the same passion as the Munich team. However, spending so much time on a project does not have the same implications for everyone.
To illustrate this point let us look at the top three teams of all competitions and the number of teams summed up by country (exemplary numbers from the first competition 2017-I).
What stands out here is the relatively low rate of participating teams from Europe (compared to the high number of US contenders) and their overrepresentation in gaining one of the top 3 spots.
One advantage of European teams are low tuition fees. In Germany for example there is no university tuition at all. If you take a year off from university in Germany to work on an innovation project such as Hyperloop, you will lose a year of studying time, but most likely gain an incredible amount of practical knowledge in your field. If you do the same thing in the USA, you will make the same gains, but the remaining part of the university will often cost you thousands of dollars in tuition fees and further inflate your student loans. This allows European teams to invest more of their time in this project and can surely be seen as another reason for their continued Hyperloop success.
What did this teach me?
Innovation needs time — a lot of time. No one can do successful innovation projects, if (s)he only spends a few hours per week on it. There needs to be a fair amount of time (we are talking days or weeks) that is designated to innovation only. Try to create specific days for innovation, away from normal day-to-day business, or create in-house “hackathons” where employees can work on innovation project for a week straight.
In Part 2 I will reflect on OxBridge and Ivy League, show you the money and ponder on some “make or break” scenarios. In other words, we will look at three more lessons learned from winning the SpaceX Hyperloop competition and how they can relate to successful innovation projects.
