Musk digs deep to revolutionise city driving

HAWTHORNE: Elon Musk took a break from futuristic electric cars and private space travel to unveil a low-cost tunnel he sees as a godsend for city traffic.

The billionaire behind Tesla and SpaceX late on Tuesday put the spotlight on the a 1.8km tunnel created by his Boring Company for about US$10mil (RM41.9mil).

The sample tunnel is part of Musk’s vision to have an underground network that cars, preferably Teslas, can be lowered to by lifts then slotted into tracks and propelled along at speeds up to 241kph.

“The only way to solve this is to go 3D, for the transport system to match the living quarters,” Musk said of solving the problem of traffic congestion in urban areas.

“It’s all relatively simple, no Nobel Prize is needed here.”

An entrance to a sample tunnel was shown publicly for the first time in this city near Los Angeles as the initial stage of Musk’s project to revolutionise city traffic by zipping along below congested streets.

Musk founded the Boring company two years ago as a self-financed, side-endeavor to his work at Tesla and SpaceX.

Specially designed equipment drills tunnels wide enough to accommodate a car on a track. The network envisioned is an infinitely expandable mesh of tunnels and elevators capable of having more than 4,000 cars pass through per hour.

“The deepest mines are deeper than the tallest buildings,” Musk said. “The profound breakthrough is very simple: it’s the ability to turn a normal car into a passively stable vehicle by adding the deployable tracking wheels, stabilising wheels,

so that it can travel at high speed through a small tunnel.”

Tunnels will eventually be open to all compatible self-driving electric vehicles, but for now Boring is using Teslas in the tube.

The idea for the project came to the billionaire of South African origin when he was fuming at the wheel of his car, trapped in traffic jams between his chic Bel Air villa and the SpaceX offices in Hawthorne.

It is a journey that takes him more than 90 minutes and he considered soul-crushing. — AFP

— Reuters ‘ Tunnel vision’: Musk attending the unveiling event by The Boring Company for the test tunnel of a proposed underground transportation network across Los Angeles County, in Hawthorne, California.

. — Reuters Way of the future: A modified Tesla Model X electric vehicle entering a tunnel during the unveiling event