See How Elon Musk Plans to Transform Transportation With Tunnels

A New Venture

Elon Musk is a busy, busy man. He's currently dividing his genius between Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, Neuralink, and also his tunneling venture, the Boring Company. Musk presented a video of his vision for the company at a recent TED conference.

 

In the video we see Tesla cars zooming along on platforms called "skates" deep underground. Essentially, the tunnel network would allow drivers to zoom under traffic jams on the movable platforms, which would zoom along at speeds up to 210 km per hour (130 mph).

No More Road Blocks?

At the conference, Musk was reported by Recode as saying, "There’s no real limit to how many levels of tunnels you can have. The deepest mines are much deeper than the tallest buildings are tall.” While Musk may not see depth as any hindrance, even he may balk at the mountainous hoops the company is going to have to jump though should they want to make such a network in reality. It's easy to imagine there will be inevitable mounds of paperwork and countless environmental impact studies.

Musk himself claims to only spend only "two or three percent" of his time on the project. He admited that "It’s kind of puttering along but making good progress.”

For a while, people weren't even sure if Musk's desire to dig tunnels was serious. Even now people are still asking if it's all just for laughs. A Twitter user asked Musk "are you actually building this, or is this still a joke? Hard to tell with you…"

And in typical Elon fashion, he responded cheekily with a simple, nondescript "Couldn't agree more."