Tag: The Boring Company

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Las Vegas bets on Elon Musk’s Boring Company

Las Vegas Boring Company Loop
An artist’s conception shows a vehicle carrying passengers through a loop tunnel in Las Vegas. (Boring Company / LVCVA Illustration)

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s board of directors today approved a recommendation to have the Boring Company build an underground express tunnel that could connect downtown Las Vegas, the city’s convention center and airport, and other points of interest.

It’s the latest roll of the dice for the tunneling company founded by tech titan Elon Musk a little more than two years ago.

The proposition hasn’t yet paid off: The LVCVA and the Boring Company still have to work out the specifics of the tunnel’s design, construction and operational plans. But today’s recommendation sets the stage for the 14-member board to approve a contract at a future meeting to be held by June.

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Elon Musk shows off Boring Company test tunnel

Boring Company tunnel
A Tesla Model X electric car with retractable wheel gear sits inside the Boring Company’s test tunnel. The company’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, says the apparatus turns the car into a “rail-guided train.” (Elon Musk via Twitter)

The Boring Company’s hole in the ground in Hawthorne, Calif., got a Hollywood-style debut tonight courtesy of the company’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk.

Musk stood just outside a 1.14-mile-long test tunnel, illuminated in blue light, and spoke glowingly to a VIP crowd about how tunnels could turn the “soul-crushing” gridlock of urban traffic into a sci-fi experience.

“They’re sort of like wormholes,” he said. “You’re driving around, you think, ugh, I need to get to the other side of L.A., New York, whatever. Drop down the wormhole, pshew, pop out the other side and you just drive normally. I think this is, like, really a panacea.”

Tonight’s first tours served as a curtain-raiser for Musk’s Loop concept, which involves building a 3-D network of tunnels, elevators and ramps  — and then sending autonomous electric cars equipped with retractable guide wheels zipping through those tunnels at speeds of up to 150 mph.

That’s a departure from Musk’s previous idea of using custom-built “skates” to carry cars and people.

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Elon Musk celebrates tunnel’s big breakthrough

Tunnel worker
A worker knocks dirt off the Boring Company’s tunneling machine after its emergence into a vertical shaft. (Elon Musk via Twitter)

The Boring Company’s “cutting-edge technology” got a shout-out from billionaire founder Elon Musk tonight after the venture’s tunneling machine, nicknamed Godot, broke through into a vertical exit shaft in Hawthorne, Calif.

“Congratulations … on completing the LA/Hawthorne tunnel!” Musk wrote in a tweet.

The breakthrough apparently finishes up the heavy-duty boring job for a test tunnel that connects a parking lot next to SpaceX’s headquarters to another piece of property purchased by the Boring Company.

Musk mandated the project to demonstrate a low-cost, small-bore approach to urban tunnelling. The first mile-long section of the Hawthorne Test Tunnel — including a spur line to the exit shaft, known as O’Leary Station — is scheduled to open for invitation-only tours starting on Dec. 10.

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Boring Company proposes tunnel to Dodger Stadium

Dugout Loop plan
A cutaway graphic shows how the western terminus of the Dugout Loop might look, with electric-powered “skates” lined up to be lowered into the transit tunnel. (Boring Company Graphic)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company, is getting the go-ahead sign on a project to build a transit tunnel connecting Dodger Stadium with one of Los Angeles’ Metro Red Line subway stations.

The Boring Company laid out the plan for the Dugout Loop on its website, saying that the linkup could take baseball fans and concertgoers to the stadium in less than four minutes for a roughly $1 fare.

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Elon Musk: Chicago tunnel can be done in 3 years

Mark this down for later: Tech billionaire Elon Musk says the Boring Company could begin work on the express tunnel linking downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport in three to four months, and have it finished in three years. Musk, who’s famous for overly optimistic timelines, laid out that plan today as he stood alongside Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to announce the deal at a news conference in the unfinished Block 37 transit superstation.

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Boring Company wins nod for Chicago airport tunnel

Boring Company tunnel skate
An artist’s conception shows one of the Boring Company’s “skates” traveling through a transit tunnel. (Boring Company Illustration)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Boring Company is getting the go-ahead to build a multibillion-dollar express transit system between downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport, city officials said.

Mayoral spokesman Grant Klinzman told GeekWire in a tweet tonight that the Boring Company won the bid. “Consider it confirmed,” he said.

In a follow-up statement, the Boring Company said its aim will be “to alleviate soul-destroying traffic by constructing safe, affordable, and environmentally friendly public transportation systems.”

Musk’s 18-month-old company beat out a bid from O’Hare Xpress LLC, a consortium that included the Mott MacDonald engineering firm and JLC Infrastructure, a venture backed by former basketball star Magic Johnson.

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Elon Musk’s Boring Company delivers flamethrowers

Flamethrower
The Boring Company’s $500 flamethrower gets a demonstration. Billionaire Elon Musk says the device should be called “not a flamethrower” to stay on the regulatory safe side. (Elon Musk via Twitter)

Billionaire tech guru Elon Musk showed off pictures of the Boring Company’s first commercial flamethrowers being distributed to lines of buyers today — and joked that the device has been renamed “Not a Flamethrower” so as not to run afoul of customs or shipping regulations.

“First 1000 Boring Company Flamethrowers being picked up today!” Musk tweeted.

As shown in Musk’s tweeted pictures, hundreds lined up at the pickup site in Los Angeles to get their purchases and pose for pictures as flames licked out from the flamethrowers’ barrels.

Thousands more of the contraptions will be shipped out in the weeks ahead, Musk said. An initial offering of 20,000 flamethrowers, priced at $500 each, sold out within four days in January.

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6 takeaways from Elon Musk’s big tunnel talk

Elon Musk and Steve Davis
Elon Musk and Boring Company project leader Steve Davis talk about tunnels at Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles. (Boring Company Photo / Kevin Mills)

If billionaire Elon Musk’s tunnel vision comes to pass, travelers will be able to zip beneath Los Angeles through an underground Loop system at 150 mph for about $1 a ride.

That’s the promise of the Boring Company in a nutshell. During a Thursday night session that lasted nearly an hour, Musk and the Boring Company’s project leader, Steve Davis, laid out their case for building a network of tunnels 30 feet or more beneath Los Angeles, starting with a 2.7-mile “proof of concept” dig.

Musk’s aim is to get around the “soul-destroying traffic” that afflicts L.A. and other big cities, by building as many tunnels as needed to accommodate underground transit on fast-moving pods. Priority would be given to passengers and bicyclists, but cars could be lowered from the streets into subterranean superhighways as well.

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Elon Musk sweetens the pitch for his tunnel vision

LAX-bound pod
An artist’s conception shows a pod heading for Los Angeles International Airport through a Boring Company transit tunnel. (Boring Company Illustration)

Billionaire Elon Musk is talking up his tunnel-boring vision at a public forum in Los Angeles tonight, and hinting that the Boring Company’s Hyperloop system could eventually whisk travelers to sea-based spaceports.

But first, the Boring Company has to clear away logistical, legal and regulatory roadblocks — which is part of Musk’s agenda for his 7 p.m. PT presentation at Leo Baeck Temple in L.A. The Boring Company says the forum will be live-streamed via its website.

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Boring Company aims to give ‘free rides’ in tunnel

Boring Company tunnel
The Boring Company tunnel lies beneath Hawthorne, Calif. (Boring Company Photo / October 2017)

The details may be fuzzy, but billionaire Elon Musk says he’s aiming to open the Boring Company’s first test tunnel beneath the Los Angeles area to the public in a few months, “pending final regulatory approvals.”

The Boring Company has been working for well more than a year on a tunnel that has its entrance in what was once a parking lot next to SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.

Last month, the Los Angeles City Council’s public works committee approved an environmental review exemption that cleared the way for another tunnel project beneath West Los Angeles. As laid out by the Los Angeles Times, the Boring Company’s plan traces a 2.7-mile route that lies 30 to 70 feet below ground.

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