Elon Musk Unveils Boring Company's Car-Flinging Tunnel
In a quiet, production-dominated suburb of Los Angeles, Elon Musk and his Boring Company presented a parking space what he thinks is the future of "mass transit" and the best way to eliminate traffic jams: electric, autonomous vehicles that carry An additional set of wheels, shoots through layers of thin tunnels at speeds up to 150 mph.
If that sounds a little amazing, well duh. Musical's presentation, drawn by an excellent entry aboard a Tesla Model X, which traveled through the company's acclaimed 1.14 kilometer long test tunnel, filled out details of his ambitious plans to destroy LA overload with new and improved tunnel drilling processes. 1[ads1] But the test tunnel still appears to be a test tunnel, and Boring Company in a deep experimental phase. A big question is still.
"I think this is, like a real panacea," said Musk and stood in front of the tunnel, extending from a SpaceX car park to the town of Hawthorne. A panacea for a terrible sick. Traffic, he said, "is like oxygen on the soul."
Some major elements of Boring Company's "mass transit" concept, known as "Loop", has changed since Musk last featured it in May. Gone are the "electric skates", the platforms that would travel vehicles through an extensive tunnel network, whose tendrils BoCo want to spread one day in the LA metro council / world. Instead, users will now install specialized wheels on their own electric, autonomous vehicles, which will guide the vehicles along the tracks in the tunnels. These look a bit like bike training wheels, but sit parallel to the ground:
Also, the Boring Company is the 16-passenger pod concept, the centerpiece of what Musk once said was a system that would put pedestrians and cyclists first. This is a system intended to carry people's cars – as long as they are completely electric and able to drive themselves. For those without such vehicles, Musk said, cars would continuously circulate the Loop system to pick up and drop anyone who wants a trip. Pressing materials from Boring Company say that each tunnel should support 4000 cars per hour – about 16,000 passengers, assuming each car is almost full. It is the capacity of about 11.5 full (but not packed) New York City underground trains.
Boring
"We do not say there should be other public transport," Musk said on Tuesday night. "Let's do all we can in every direction to ease traffic."
The technology is also far from done. The car that traveled through the test tunnel, as the company used to give demo rides to fans and reporters, only hit speeds of around 50 mph, not 150 mph. (Musk said it was able to travel 110 mph.) And Musk admitted The LA Times that the trip was uneven and that Boring Company "kind of ran out of time."
"The bumpiness will not be down there, he said to Times ." It will be as smooth as ice cream. This is just a prototype. Therefore, it is only a little rough around the edges. "
Hawthorn City City Council allowed the company's project to quickly track through the environmental assessment process because it is a demonstration, not a functional form of mass transit, and because the city concluded its construction would not interfere with neighbors. Musk says that the company digs so deep underground that its tunneling is not noticeable from above and given that tunnels are safe in earthquake-exposed places like LA. BoCo spent only two years and $ 10 million building this test tunnel.
Musk Tweeted Boring Company entered December 2016 when he excited to be so frustrated by the LA traffic that he would buy a tunnel-drilling machine and "just start digging." In early 2017 there was an honest-to-god hole in SpaceX car park, the beginning of the test track that the company revealed today. Musk has claimed that cities like LA can only throw traffic by going "3D down or 3D up" and that flying cars (that would be up) are too dangerous.
Derm His vision: Underground road bearing hundreds of thousands of high-speed vehicles transported into the world of thousands of lifts woven in the vast city. (Musk resembles system of "worm holes.") Drilling has said that it will charge riders $ 1 each, will finance this vision itself and will not accept state funds.
Transport engineers and town planners have criticized the plan, as they claim, do not take into account the underlying causes of traffic, such as bottlenecks on the highway on and off ramps (or hoist entrances and exits where cars enter the system) and urban sprawl. The plan faces another enemy: The public environmental assessment process, which can sometimes take over ten years for an infrastructure project of this ambition.
Musk has determined that he must reduce the cost of digging tunnels and speeding up the process dramatically. Eventually, Musk has said that he wants his modified boring machine to beat his pet gary Gary in a run and increase the standard dull pace by a factor of 14. (Professional tunnels have public doubts as to whether Musics innovations are possible. Also, the original Gary is long dead. BoCo now cares for Gary VI.) He has also said that his tunnels have a reduced width of about 12 meters wide and will also reduce costs.
Musk also announced last summer that Jorda, which was upgraded by his tunneling, would be repurposed in brick, which will be sold through another muskular spin, The Brick Store LLC. The bricks have already been used to build a Monty Python and The Holy Grail tower due to SpaceX's headquarters. BoCo has also promised to release LEGO sets in their lifestyles.
Boring Company has also appeared throughout the country. It's this test tunnel, in Hawthorne, and the company's plan to build a small system that runs between one of three subway stations in the LA Metro to Dodger Stadium. (Musk told reporters on Tuesday that he wants to build the entire LA system by 2028, as the city will host the Olympics.)
Boring has also promised a DC to Baltimore connection but has not received all permissions as needed to get that project to go. In addition, there is a high-speed connection between downtown Chicago and the O & Hare International Airport, which Musk has promised to build for no more than $ 1 billion, a knowledge of a major infrastructure project. Drilling is reportedly in the midst of an environmental audit process there. (This project, which had been mastered by mayor Rahm Emanuel, can face political challenges now when Emanuel leaves the office.)
One project no longer on the Boring Company list: Another test tunnel in West Los Angeles. BoCo resigned from this project after settling a lawsuit with two local neighborhood groups, claiming that the company attempted to circumvent city rules by getting a subway project prosecuted.
So yes, there has been a long and confusing way to this point. Musk has proposed a number of ideas related to his tunneling. Many have been dubious, but most have been exciting, for nothing but their boldness. But perhaps this meandering is the way to the future. It's definitely the way to Musk, a man who has never been much for the traditional, stodgy way of doing things where you dream about a plan, announces it in a carefully formulated press release and then spending the next few years doing it right as you said you wanted. Some CEOs wear suits and sit on the back of limousines. Others come from tunnels in smoked flannel. You decide which group will give better showmen and that change how things really work.
1 Correction attached, 12/19/18, 1:40 ET: A previous version of this story misplaced the length of the test tunnel. It is 1.14 miles long, not 2.2 kilometers.
