Welcome to Elon Musk's latest "Public Utilities But If I Owned Them" venture: Claustrophobic nightmare highways! Or at least, that's what the Boring Company's recently-tweeted video shows:

The clip comes on the tails of this morning's announcement that the Boring Company scored a contract to build a tunnel connecting downtown Chicago to O'Hare airport, though it's not clear if the video in the tweet is connected to the news (there's no talk of linking Chicago to Malibu quite yet).

Indeed, the tweet prompted a fair amount of confusion. This video shows "The Loop" version of the technology, as described on the company's website, where "electric skates will carry between 8 and 16 passengers (mass transit), or a single passenger vehicle."

However, it doesn't really look like the skate in the original demo video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5V_VzRrSBI

An electric skate, according to the Boring Company's FAQ, is supposed to be "a platform on wheels propelled by multiple electric motors." In the newest video, though, you can see a rudimentary platform whooshing the car along. It looks nothing like the platform in the initial plans, but it is a platform nonetheless.

Does this video mean the design for cars has been altered? Or this is simply a new way of testing the track? And what is supposed to happen to pedestrians who were initially supposed to be "prioritized" over cars?

Yes, this video raises more questions than it answers. But that's probably the point. In time, we'll probably find out whether, in this version of Musk's reality, Boring tunnels are now just for Boring cars, too.

Update 6/15/18 11:22 AM: The original version of this article didn't acknowledge the rudimentary platform visible in the video. But, as a reader pointed out, there is a platform there — the car is not in contact with the tunnel directly. Thanks for keeping us on our toes, guys!


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