Can hyperloop technology take Turkish logistics industry to a next level? A preliminary analysis

Abstract

Our goal in this thesis is to get a deeper knowledge and understanding about Turkish Logistics Industry, see the trends towards the new technologies such as Hyperloop, which we discussed in this thesis, and searched for most appropriate way to implement such technologies within the industry. Elon Musk come up with the idea of Hyperloop in 2013, which can be explained as a mixture of railway and airway, travel across within tubes that specifically made for Hyperloop. From that day, it has been started to discuss about many different ways. Musk's idea was considering human transportation via Hyperloop, but as time progressed, cargo transportation started to be considered via Hyperloop. With all these development, many companies have shown interest in cargo transportation via Hyeprloop. Huge investments happened in countries such as UAE, India, Germany etc. In our thesis, we aimed to show whether such investment in Turkey is possible, if so what are the main challenges would be and how we can overcome of these challenges? In addition these, we also tried to determine cargo types that can be carried via Hyperloop, and possible routes accordingly, since Hardt Global, a Netherlands based Hyperloop company, has interest in investment in Turkey. Firstly, we conducted a literature review about new trends in LI and the major factors affecting the modal choice in LI. Due to Hyperloop being a new technology, we learned the details from Hardt Global. With respect to literature we also expand our research wih market and gathered some data to take the next step. Our idea was collecting data of economical indicators and logistics within Turkey, compare it to the knowledge we gained through literature review and set up a Semi-Structured Interview (SSI) accordingly. Hence, our methodology in this thesis was SSI we conducted with market drivers and prospects in Turkish LI. With SSI, we aimed to get more deep knowledge of the industry, learn some of the major problems that the industry faces, as well as introduce Hyperloop to get ideas about correct way of implementation in Turkey.