Boring Company
First undercut, then do nothing: Elon Musk’s “boring” company is said to be in trouble with the US authorities
The only time you heard about a finished project from the “Boring Company” was the CES 2022. So you’re driving in the tunnel under Las Vegas – you’re still waiting somewhere else.
© John Locher / Picture Alliance
Because the traffic jams in American cities bothered him, Elon Musk founded the “Boring Company”. His goal: Build a lot of tunnels quickly so that you can get from A to B without waiting. But anyone who works with the tunneling company apparently has to do one thing above all: wait.
With his tunneling company “Boring Company” (“boring” means “boring” as well as “drilling” in technical terms), Elon Musk has been planning big things since it was founded six years ago. First, he wanted to get the traffic chaos in American metropolises under control, in the distant future the company should build the infrastructure on Mars, on which Musk still wants to lead humanity.
But as is so often the case with jack-of-all-trades Musk, his projects seem to slip away from time to time – also in this case – and very earthly problems catch up with the multiple founder and company boss. As the “Wall Street Journal” reported, the “Boring Company” turns out to be quite an unreliable business partner.
45 million instead of one billion – unfortunately without the start of construction
In San Bernardino County, therefore, the construction of a six-kilometer-long rail tunnel was planned, which should lead to the nearby airport. They wanted to put down around one billion US dollars for this. Musk’s tunneling company then intervened and instead offered to build a tunnel for autonomous Teslas – at a price of 45 million US dollars. Unsurprisingly, those responsible took action and rejected the original plan.
After the authority then wanted to talk about the concrete construction measures, the “Boring Company” is said to have no longer reported.
The same picture in Chicago: A quick connection to the airport was planned there, which Musk’s company wanted to drill for around one billion US dollars. And while City Councilman Scott Waguespack described the sum as “ridiculously low,” Chicago Musk wanted to give Musk the nod. In this case, too, nothing seemed to follow the promises. To be fair, the mayor at the time, Rahm Emanuel, resigned and the subsequent administration apparently canceled the project.
But the pattern shows itself again and again – also in Maryland. In 2017, Musk reportedly had a verbal commitment in his pocket for a hundreds of kilometer tunnel — this time for the Hyperloop, a high-speed transit system in which passenger pods move in a vacuum at close to the speed of sound.
At the time, Governor Larry Hogan excitedly talked about this project, and an employee was temporarily in Los Angeles to look at the “Godot” machine intended for the tunnel. Named after a fictional character you’re waiting for, the machine lived up to its namesake, though.
The “Wall Street Journal” writes that Musk could have started the project in 2018, but to date not a meter has been dug. Officials said, “The company would only have had to bring the drill and the work could have started.” Four years have passed since then, and the project was removed from the Boring company website last year. The same applies to a project in Los Angeles.
A tunnel is actually in operation
the digital company presence currently lists five projects. Three of them relate to the existing tunnel in Las Vegas, which the company actually opened in spring 2021 and is currently operating. The first endurance test took place at the “CES” technology trade fair in January 2022. Countless journalists took the opportunity and drove through the tunnels below the player city, quite a few reported traffic jams caused by transfer times at the stations.
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The management of the player city remains the same – the tunnels are there. In further projects, the “Boring Company” wants to connect more hotels and ultimately build a circular route that connects large parts of the desert metropolis. If the concept works, it would actually be a big win for Las Vegas. Long distances and conventional traffic jams plague the city enormously at peak times.
Two other projects that the Boring Company says it has completed are a test tunnel in California and a Hyperloop test track less than a mile long.
A machine to wonder about
However, Musk’s company remains true to the principle of making big promises. A look at the latest machine, called “Prufrock”, astonishes industry insiders. The machine was “developed to realize mega infrastructure projects in a few weeks instead of years.” In concrete terms, this means: In the medium term, the machine should be able to drill seven miles a day, i.e. 11.2 kilometers.
Martin Herrenknecht, founder of the specialist for tunnel boring machines of the same name, described the ambitions in the “manager magazine” as unrealistic and explained that even in ten years, when it comes to tunnel construction, Musk will not be where he has arrived in record time with Tesla. The industry veteran described the multi-CEO as a “skillful noisemaker”.
In the Wall Street Journal, Lok Home, president of Robbins, also a manufacturer of tunnel boring machines, takes a similar view. He described Musk’s promises as “completely unrealistic”.
In the social networks Musk is in the usual manner taken under protection. It says that San Bernardino did not accept Musk’s conditions and therefore preferred the more expensive project. In Los Angeles, politicians ultimately decided against the tunnel.