--- title: "Elon Musk Just Offered to Drill a Hole Through An Australian Mountain" description: "Boring Company CEO Elon Musk told a lawmaker he would be willing to dig a tunnel through an Australian Mountain — and for an astonishingly low price." date: "2019-01-16" modified: "2019-01-16" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/boring-company-elon-musk-australian-mountain" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "australia" - "boring company" - "elon musk" - "tesla" --- # Elon Musk Just Offered to Drill a Hole Through An Australian Mountain ![]() *\Image: MARK SCHIEFELBEIN/AFP/Getty Images/Tag Hartman-Simkins\* ## Twitter Offer Elon Musk just made an Australian lawmaker an offer an unusual offer. In a Twitter [exchange]() today, the Boring Company CEO offered New South Wales parliament member Jeremy Buckingham a tunnel underneath the Blue Mountains to link Sydney to the West. The dig would come at a competitive price of "about $15 million per kilometer, so probably around $750 million," according to [Musk's tweet](). That's a lot less than the "up to $1 billion per mile" figure the Boring Company estimates on its [website]() that a tunnel would cost at conventional rates. The idea would be to help Sydney's notorious traffic. ## Elon \<3 Australia The tunnel would be a followup to Tesla — a different Elon Musk venture — installing the [biggest lithium-ion battery farm]() in the world in South Australia back in 2017. It's a project that won a lot of goodwill among Australian lawmakers by [saving local cities from energy woes](). It would also be the Boring Company's first project outside of the U.S. Other planned projects include a [tunnel]() that connects LA's baseball stadium to a nearby subway line, and a high-speed connection that connects [Chicago city to its airport](). ## Cheaper Tunnels One of the Boring Company's central missions is to bring down the costs of digging tunnels by developing faster and [more efficient]() boring machines. While we have yet to see concrete proof of the company's ability to cut costs by ["a factor of more than ten"]() by doing that, a tunnel that relieves Sydney's traffic could be a lucrative and highly visible project. **READ MORE:** [Elon Musk Tells Lawmaker The Boring Company Can Dig Via Mountain for Cheap]() \[*Inverse*\] ***More on Boring tunnels: [Watch the Boring Company's Digging Machine Finish Its First Tunnel]()*** *Editor's note Jan. 16, 2019 at 5:23 PM ET: This article has been updated to correct an error about the location of Tesla's battery farm in South Australia.* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()