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Elon Musk pitches 150 MPH rides in Boring Company tunnels for $1
Earlier in the evening Musk retweeted an LA Metro tweet that said it's coordinating with The Boring Company on its test and said the two will be "partners" going forward. Much of what Musk discussed about how his concept in-city Loop would work has been answered in concept videos and the company's FAQ, but he specifically said that the plan is for rides that cost a $1, and carry up to 16 passengers through hundreds of tunnels to those small, parking space-size tunnels located throughout a city.
The big problem is digging those tunnels to start with, and while part of the session included video of a speedy test run through the tunnel Musk has already dug on SpaceX property, the plan is to pick up the pace. Davis said Musk has challenged his team to match the digging pace of a snail (0.03 MPH), and get up to 1/10th of the average walking speed of a human at about 0.3 MPH -- compared to its current top speed of about 0.003 MPH.
Previously: Elon Musk Wants to be Boring
Elon Musk's Boring Tunnel Near Los Angeles
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday May 20 2018, @04:45PM
Why not sell now? 50 feet per day is pretty good for a tunnel boring machine so 50 / 24 (per hour instead of day) / 5280 (feet per mile) and I get about 0.0004 which is less than a tenth the speed of Musk's boring machine.
I checked the project FAQ and
Ah well that's almost cheating. Wake me when they bore thousands of feet per day thru Manhattan granite. I thought thats what he was doing, therefore he should sell his amazing tech to the worlds TBM producers for billions. But instead he's not boring thru rock, but thru river silt.
I'm just saying that if you don't live in a city built on fill subject to soil liquefaction during earthquakes, what he's doing doesn't matter because he's comparing apples to oranges. A 50 foot day is OK thru solid rock and he's not fixing that problem.
It would seem to be a lot cheaper to change things to not require people to move, than to move people cheaply. My gut level guess of the real end game, given the guy's delight in small diameter drilling, is setting up an autonomous underground railway like the one Chicago had but drone controlled. If, as it seems, you can't put self driving cars on the road without killing a lot of people, you might be able to put large self driving trains underground and then have small flying drones for the last mile delivery or whatever. Also "tunnels everywhere" sounds tasty for everything thats currently buried or aerial, he might be taking aim at the entire aerial cable infrastructure budget.