Transportation
Dig Your Crazy Tunnel, Elon Musk!
The Tesla CEO says his Boring Company tunnel cost $10 million per mile to build. If that’s true, it could be a big deal for public transit.
Let’s get one thing straight: The Tesla-in-a-tunnel that Elon Musk unveiled to reporters on Tuesday night in Los Angeles was not a “train,” although that’s what he called it on Twitter.
The Boring Company’s 12-foot wide, 1.14 mile-long tunnel beneath a Hawthorne industrial park couldn’t have fit anything bigger than a passenger vehicle, in this case a Model X that seats seven. There were no rails. There were rough-hewn gutters that theoretically allow said vehicle to roll through on a set of tracking wheels, but Tuesday’s short ride was literally bumpy. This was not a frictionless high-speed trip aboard a sleek electric-powered “skates,” as shown in earlier digital renderings. “We kind of ran out of time,” Musk explained.