Yes. We are currently trying looking for investors to join our seed round of funding.

Haku Maglev rails are compatible with conventional trains. This allows for freight trains to still run at night time for example. Furthermore, Haku Maglev trains can also share railway platforms with conventional trains. This makes Haku Maglev very easy to integrate into existing railway networks.

The problem with high-speed rail is that it fundamentally still uses wheels. The problem with running steel wheels on steel rails is that the contact area is extremely small (about 1 cm^2). This results in immense pressures at the contact area which results in ground vibrations when a train goes by. In urban areas, this is a fundamental issue. Maglev solves this by distributing the weight of the train uniformly along its entire length.

Another problem is that high-speed rail uses friction for braking. And the friction coefficient of rail-wheel contact is dependent on the weather. Rain for example can increase the braking distance by a factor of 10. However, with maglev, we remove that fundamental weather dependency from the equation, resulting in much larger capacity of the rail network.

We have so far only managed to create a digital twin of the Haku City. We are currently working hard on a small scale prototype which we hope will prove the viability of the Haku City. The first Haku trains will run on 2034.

What about it? Flying ballast is mostly an issue in high-speed rail because of the aerodynamic turbulence around the bogie area. However, maglev means that the actuators are uniformly distributed across the train's entire length. This means that the underbody of the train is much more streamlined and therefore less prone to flying ballast.

Furthermore, although the top speed of the train is 700 km/h and it does reach it on some straighter parts of the railway, the average speed of the train will be about 200-250 km/h. Therefore, Haku Maglev will actually have performances similar to HSR, but with much lower construction costs and less vibrations and lower maintenance costs. Haku Maglev should be seen more as a better and more affordable version of HSR than a maglev.

We are aware that traffic control systems are not designed to operate on high speeds. Even ERTMS is designed for up to 500 km/h, which is far from the top speeds of 700 km/h that Haku aims to achieve. However, our engineers are hard at work to develop some new innovative solutions to traffic control. We believe that it will be challenging, but not impossible, especially with the developments in cybersecurity, the internet and overal digital communication.

Upgrading ordinary rails for maglev rails has the benefit of being affordable, but the constraint of curves. So even if the train can go a maximum speed of 700 km/h, that will only be achieved for short amounts of time. On average, the train will go about 200-250 km/h. This means that Haku Maglev will achieve something more similar to HSR but at a fraction of the construction and maintenance costs. Speed is not everything. There are things such as robustness of the network, frequency of rail, comfort of passengers, comfort of people living around railways, amount of delays due to moving parts on the infrastructure. And these are far oftentimes more important than speed.

We have designed innovative level crossings which will be compatible with Haku Maglev. The current problem with going at high speeds in level crossings on conventional trains is the vibrational wave reflection you get when passing from soft ballast as a foundation to hard concrete which is what most level crossings are made of. However, with Maglev, these vibrational reflection waves are less apparent due to the fact that the weight of the train is distributed uniformly across its entire length resulting in general ground wave phenomena of much lower frequency and smaller amplitude.

Maglev is actually much safer than conventional trains.

1. Because the train wraps around the rail and has active guidance systems, chance of derailment due to gusts of wind in turns or from going at a turn at too high speeds is much lower.

2. Furthermore, better distributed weight of the train results in less strain on infrastructure and therefore less risks of infrastructure such as railway embankments buckling under all that pressure.

3. Less weather dependent braking systems results in a safe braking distance in all situations.

4. If all goes wrong, we always have wheels with brakes installed obviously.

We have designed the maglev rails to be backwards compatible with conventional steel wheels. Therefore, freight trains can run overnight as normal. With less maintenance needed due to no moving parts on the rail, this is also a possibility. In Europe at least, the problem with running freight at night is that there are a lot of maintenance being done at night, and passenger rail has the right of way. Therefore, freight trains have never been that popular in Europe as they have been in the US for example.