Something’s occurring at Virgin Hyperloop, the startup trying to deliver Elon Musk’s imaginative and prescient of high-speed trains to life. At some level in the previous few weeks, the corporate has quietly modified its identify again to Hyperloop One, the model it used between 2016 and 2017. Its web site has been scrubbed clear, too, utilizing an previous inventory picture of the XP-1 check pod and the declare that “It’s a new day at Hyperloop One,” too.

This isn’t only a web site subject, because the Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram accounts have all reverted to the previous emblem and identify as properly. And the change needs to be pretty current — a tweet posted October 22nd nonetheless carried the Virgin emblem and identify. While we will not speculate on exactly what prompted the change, it seems to be a deliberate effort in the direction of de-branding. Seemingly, Richard Branson and Virgin are actually now not keen to share a model with the logistics firm. 

The firm has actually seen quite a few adjustments by way of this yr, shedding 111 staffers and abandoning its much-hyped try to construct a passenger system. After that, majority proprietor DP World mentioned that it could pivot towards utilizing the know-how for logistics, enabling the development of “inland ports” to ferry cargo containers to their eventual vacation spot sooner than the current system.

We have reached out to Virgin, Hyperloop One and (associate) DP World within the hope of getting some kind of clarification on the change, and can replace this if we hear again.