Elon Musk appeared in public this week to unveil the first completed test tunnel for his side-project, the Boring Company.
The 1.14-mile tunnel segment is in the municipality of Hawthorne in California, right next to Musk’s rocket company SpaceX.
It was created as a proof of concept to show that cars can be transported underground in order to free up traffic congestion on the surface. Back in 2014, Musk called Los Angeles traffic ‘soul destroying’ and promised to ‘build a boring machine and just start digging.’
According to the billionaire, who arrived in a Tesla, the total price tag for the finished segment was about $10 million. That including the cost of excavation, internal infrastructure, lighting, ventilation, safety systems, communications and a track.
When fully operational, the ‘loop’ system as Musk envisions it will consist of passenger- and automobile-carrying platforms called ‘skates’ that can zip through the tunnels by way of electric power once they descend into the underground network.
Alternately, he said, passenger cars could be outfitted with retractable side wheels allowing them to travel through the loop autonomously.
‘To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels,’ explains the Boring Company in its FAQ.
‘Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight and won’t fall on your head. A large network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels).
‘The key to making this work is increasing tunneling speed and dropping costs by a factor of 10 or more – this is the goal of The Boring Company’.
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