A prototpye of a super-maglev train that might reach 1,000 kilometers an hour has been developed by Deng Zigang and his team from the applied superconductivity laboratory at Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu. The train incorporates two technologies: maglev technology to eliminate wheel-rail friction, and evacuated tube transport to remove air friction. Deng and his team have slashed air pressure in the tube to 2.9 centibars, or 2.9 kilopascal, in experiments on a 6-meter-diameter test run of 45 m length at a maximum speed of 50 kilometers per hour. Japanese-made maglev trains traveled at a maximum speed of 603 kilometers an hour in 2015. Elon Musk’s The Boring Company has received a verbal government approval to build an underground train that can travel between New York and Washington DC (328 km) in 29 minutes.
CAS news release, March 5, 2018