Archinect - News

Tesla’s EV-charging drive-in concept is under construction in Los Angeles

2024-01-17T18:44:00-05:00

Construction on Tesla's new Stantec-designed drive-in diner and electric vehicle charging concept is making progress in Los Angeles, as the local NBC station reports.

The project, which wasn’t approved until last April, is currently taking shape at 7001 W Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. Once it is completed, the retro-inspired dining space and rest area will offer drivers 32 total electric charging stations while serving classic American roadside fare wrapped in a two-story and 9,300-square-foot faux Streamline Moderne package.

Elon Musk developed the idea after thinking out loud on his Twitter account in 2018. Tesla says the station will operate on a 24-hour capacity once it opens later in the fall.

Previously on Archinect: Tesla's diner & drive-in theater supercharger station concept gets approved for West Hollywood

The development is significant as other fast food chains across the country are preparing their own EV charging station plans, according to Axios. A two-scre...

Tesla's diner & drive-in theater supercharger station concept gets approved for West Hollywood

2023-08-28T15:14:00-04:00

Tesla’s retro-inspired supercharging diner & drive-in movie theater concept will begin construction soon after the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety recently approved a planning permit for the company’s first Stantec-led design at 7001 Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, Teslarati reports.

The previously announced plan calls for a two-story, 9,300-square-foot structure with bars and an outdoor restaurant seating area. The structure will have two "drive-in" screens, which play movies of approximately 30 minutes in length, and capacity for 29 total charging stations. Tesla says it will operate the station on a 24-hour capacity.

CEO Elon Musk earlier this month described its design as "Grease meets The Jetsons with Supercharging" before promising its realization by the end of this year. Only technical drawings from the permitting application have been made official, leading some to offer their own speculative renderings via social media. A model of the structure was ...

Elon Musk is planning a utopian Hoovertown outside of Austin

2023-03-10T11:36:00-05:00

In meetings with landowners and real-estate agents, Musk has reportedly described his idea for the estate — which he envisions building on thousands of acres of property he purchased on the Colorado River — as a utopia, so that his employees can live, work, and play without ever leaving.

The community, named “Snailbrook” after the Boring Company mascot, would be the first new town in Texas since Ellinger was incorporated in 2020. Pre-fab homes are the most likely housing option, with rents as low as $800 and a Montessori school campus to serve employees' children, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Musk, who owns some 3,500 acres in Bastrop County, reportedly gave disgraced antisemite Kanye West and his new architect beau a tour of the site last year as part of a ramp-up that included internal employee discussions as to who among them should be elected mayor. The entrepreneur had previously mentioned his desire to build a “starbase city” in the area.

If it ever gets up and running, it would join the new BIG-planned Telosa in an alarming trend of new billionaire-funded Utopian cities in the American west.

This is just the beginning. America's new oligarchs are focussing on "cities." And are actively seeking to create alternatives to cities which they provide ser...

Planning officials are getting fed up with Elon Musk's string of empty tunnel promises

2022-11-30T14:49:00-05:00

The six-year-old company has repeatedly teased cities with a pledge to “solve soul-destroying traffic,” only to pull out when confronted with the realities of building public infrastructure, according to former executives and local, state and federal government officials who have worked with Boring. Boring has yet to make good on its most ambitious pitch: that it can design tunnel-boring machines that are so fast to operate that they will drive down costs and shake up the industry.

The concerning string of incidents has led some to label Musk, now the world’s richest man, as a highly-compensated grifter. Chicago, Los Angeles, Maryland, and San Bernardino County are among the list of victims of Boring’s illusory promises, with even some of the company’s own demonstration sites becoming abandoned relics of a pursuit Musk began after losing patience with LA traffic in 2016.

Prominent financial interests keep pouring money into the entity in spite of its repeated ghosting. Several large-scale constructions are still tentatively planned. To date, its sole completed project is a 1.7-mile EV tunnel at Las Vegas Convention Center that was qualified under a local Amusement and Transportation Systems (ATS) provision, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Tesla is pushing to build a new drive-in diner, theatre, and supercharging station in Hollywood

2022-06-10T15:53:00-04:00

As reported by Electrek in May 2022, Tesla has moved its previously-announced plans for a supercharging station featuring a diner and drive-in movie theater from a vacant lot in the city of Santa Monica to the current location of a Shakey's Pizza franchise on 7001 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, CA.

The two-story structure will feature multiple bars and outdoor restaurant seating in addition to amphitheater-style seating overlooking its dual screens and field of 29 charging stations.

The movies are said to be approximately 30 minutes in length, roughly equal to the amount of time required by the Level 3 supercharging process, which is done with greater alacrity than the 8 to 20-hour at-home Level 1 and 2 versions. Permits are still waiting to be approved allowing the station (but not the theater) to operate 24 hours a day. Some have speculated it will carry a “retro” midcentury aesthetic reminiscent of the great Standard Oil stations documented by Ed Ruscha in the early 1960s....

Elon Musk's Boring Co. wins Clark County commission approval for 'Vegas Loop'

2021-10-21T11:24:00-04:00

Clark County lawmakers on Wednesday unanimously approved letting Musk’s Boring Co. submit plans for the project dubbed the Vegas Loop. It would connect with an existing short Convention Center Loop the company completed and began operating in June. An overall cost wasn’t disclosed.

Las Vegas has made very hefty public investments of late with a brand new football stadium (which makes up one prong of the loop), planned regional railway link with Los Angeles, and high-tech infrastructure upgrades both planned for the next the coming years.

Musk's company says it will look to complete the high-profile tunnel system with some haste, considering its seemingly stalled $1 billion high-speed rail project at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. His previous ambit for a hyperloop train from DC to Boston never took shape after years of hype and speculation. Others have been quick to question the billionaire's hand in public infrastructure schemes of similar scope and scale.

Apparently Elon Musk is living in a $50,000 Texas ADU

2021-07-15T08:52:00-04:00

After selling much of his real estate portfolio in the past year and listing his final property earlier this month to focus on his mission to Mars, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO is taking the phrase “Live below your means” to another level. Musk, who turned 50 in June, revealed in a tweet that he is now living in a humble $50,000 home that he rents from SpaceX on its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.

The house comes from a Las Vegas-based company called Boxabl. The company aims to “significantly lower the cost of homeownership for everyone” with foldable, 375-square-foot prefabricated ADU called Casitas that have developed a significant following online since the Tesla founder’s Twitter announcement in June.

Musk had previously gotten rid of his real estate holdings following another series of bizarre Twitter posts days before the birth of his child. Curbed has more on his modest new trappings here.

Elon Musk floats idea of new 'Starbase' city in Texas

2021-03-05T15:37:00-05:00

Musk [...] said on Tuesday he’s aiming to create a city called “Starbase” in Texas, teasing a new idea on Twitter as his space company expands its footprint elsewhere in the state. That footprint, first planted in the Lone Star state over a decade ago, is growing rapidly under Musk’s dogged effort to build a “gateway to Mars.”

Nearly a decade after launching the world's first commercial launchpad in Boca Chica near Brownsville, South Texas, SpaceX/Tesla/Hyperloop/Boring Company entrepreneur Elon Musk has shared a grand, and fashionably vague, announcement of a new urban stepping stone for his ambitious Mars colonization endeavor.

From thence to Mars,
And hence the Stars.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 2, 2021

The Boring Company's underground tunnel in Vegas is almost underway

2020-10-21T11:40:00-04:00

The first steps toward expanding The Boring Co. underground tunnel system throughout Las Vegas may be underway, as the Elon Musk-owned company has submitted special use permit and land use applications, according to an announcement from the Las Vegas Convention Visitors Authority.

The underground tunnel, which will stretch the length of the Strip all the way to the recently completed Allegiant Stadium, is awaiting approval from the Stadium Authority, Construction Dive reports.

Dyson designs new ventilator for COVID-19 patients

2020-03-27T11:19:00-04:00

Dyson, the U.K. company known for its vacuums and air purifiers have designed a built a new ventilator in 10 days in collaboration with The Technology Partnership (TTP), reports Fast Company. The new machine has been dubbed "CoVent." It is a portable bed-mounted ventilator that can also run on battery power.

"Since I received a call from Boris Johnson ten days ago, we have refocused resources at Dyson, and worked with TTP, The Technology Partnership, to design and build an entirely new ventilator, The CoVent," said James Dyson in an internal company email retrieved by Fast Company. "I am proud of what Dyson engineers and our partners at TTP have achieved. I am eager to see this new device in production and in hospitals as soon as possible."

Dyson will produce 10,000 ventilators for the U.K. and will donate an additional 5,000, one thousand of which will go to the U.K. with the remaining distributed to other countries.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk said Wednesday that Tesla's factory i...

Elon Musk's The Boring Company achieves milestone in Las Vegas

2020-02-14T20:53:00-05:00

Friday, the boring machine broke through the last bit of a tunnel under the Las Vegas Convention Center. This completes the first section of drilling for the project. It’s part of the master plan to move people quickly around the facility. The convention center is in the process of expanding by 1.4 million square feet. That will bring the total convention space to 4.6 million in exhibition space.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) announced today that excavation is complete for the first of The Boring Company's tunnels for the Vegas Loop that will be located beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. As previously reported on Archinect, The Boring Company projects that the tunnel loop will move 4,400 passengers per hour. It is scheduled to be completed in January 2021.

Boring Co. begins underground construction on Las Vegas peoplemover

2019-11-19T15:28:00-05:00

Elon Musk's tunneling company, The Boring Co. (TBC), will begin underground construction on a tunnel for a tram system at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Friday, Nov. 15. The people mover project is contracted at $52.5 million and scheduled to be completed in January 2021, in time for the annual Consumer Electronics Show.

The company projects that the tunnel loop will move 4,400 passengers per hour. According to Construction Dive, aboveground work on stations and stops began last month, after TBC's boring machine was assembled on site.

Elon Musk's Boring Company challenges the Las Vegas Monorail

2019-08-02T18:43:00-04:00

In May, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority approved a $48.7 million contract for The Boring Company (TBC) to design and build a short underground transit system at the city’s Convention Center, using Tesla electric vehicles running through narrow tunnels.

The Boring Company (TBC) has submitted construction drawings for their new tunnel system in Las Vegas. The plan is to "construct one pedestrian tunnel, two 0.8-mile vehicle tunnels and three underground stations, as well as modify and test seven-seater Tesla cars to carry up to 16 people," reports TechCrunch.

The Las Vegas Monorail has expressed concerns regarding the new project. According to Monorail CEO Curtis Myles, "the proposed underground people mover system intersects our existing system route, and it appears the presented tunnel alignment interferes with our existing columns for the Las Vegas Monorail system and creates significant concern regarding both vertical and lateral loads."

After some back and forth, TBC must now have "regular coordination" with the Monorail and the city's Public Works department. In the end, TBC will become a direct competitor to the Monorail.

Tesla and SolarCity's merger doesn't appear to have a bright future

2019-05-22T09:34:00-04:00

Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity is looking worse and worse. And its $1 billion solar gigafactory in Buffalo, New York, which the state built, subsidized, and equipped for SolarCity, seems to be primarily operating as a Panasonic plant. [...] In the more than two years since Tesla acquired SolarCity, its overall solar installations have plummeted by more than 76%.

In 2016 Tesla purchased SolarCity for $2.6 billion. Much criticism and backlash had been pivoted towards Elon Musk's decision to acquire the company due to his own personal ties with the company and its co-founders. Although ambitious, much like most of Musk's ideas for an ideal world, the Solar Roof line hasn't made much progress with getting production up and running. With production competitors from the East, the goal to provide rooftop shingles embedded with solar cells appears to be a flop.

Musk holding solar rooftop shingle. Image © Tesla

"The overwhelming majority of the solar cells produced at the facility are now being sold overseas rather than being used in Tesla’s “Solar Roof” photovoltaic product, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday, [...] A Tesla spokesperson told Reuters it’s “actively installing” the Solar Roof product in eight states but declined to discuss its purchases from Panasonic or provide overall installation numbers."

...

New Tesla patent seeks to improve the look of its solar roof tiles

2019-01-24T13:56:00-05:00

As noted in a recently published patent application, Tesla is developing a system that would allow the company to improve the aesthetics of the solar shingles even further. [...] Tesla notes that in prior art BIPV roofing systems, the active solar portions of a roofing module end up being visibly different in appearance compared to inactive parts of the roof.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduced the glass solar tiles as part of the automaker's growing range of energy products back in October 2016.

Let's get technical: image from Tesla's patent application to improve the aesthetic performance of its solar roof tiles.

"Various embodiments provide a new and improved approach to manufacturing solar tiles as a roofing surface," explains the summary of the recently filed Tesla patent application. "Some aspects have improved aesthetics that reduce the visual differences between solar and non-solar portions of the roof and between active solar portions and other portions of a roof tile." Read the full document here.

Elon Musk takes first steps in opening store to sell his lego-like Boring bricks

2018-11-20T13:48:00-05:00

Elon Musk has filed permits with the city of Los Angeles to launch his Boring Company offshoot, The Brick Store LLC, which would produce interlocking bricks made from dirt collected by his tunnel-digging company's operations.

As the Boring Company's LA test tunnel nears completion—an opening date has been set for this coming December 10th—the company has selected a building near the exit tunnel to locate the physical outlet for his brick making startup. Plans filed with the city of Hawthorne show the Brick Store's first brick-and-mortar will take over a humble, one story stucco building and give the former cabinet shop a fresh coat of paint.

Brick pyramid and Hyperloop tube at sunset via twitter.com/boringcompany

“The proposed colors are white, gray, and black" the planning documents read. "The proposed colors avoid monotony throughout the project site and blend well together. The color scheme does not create an incompatible look to the surrounding neighborhood."

The idea for the Br...

HyperloopTT unveils first full-scale capsule with goal of being passenger ready by 2019

2018-10-03T15:02:00-04:00

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HyperloopTT) has unveiled the first of its full-scale capsules that it hopes will one day be used to transport passengers at 750 miles per hour, reports Bloomberg. The California-based company is one of several Hyperloop contenders that have sprung up to deliver on Elon Musk’s 2013 transportation vision.

HyperloopTT will now take the capsule, called Quintero One, to the company's European HQs in France, where it has begun constructing a test track. With the goal of being passenger ready by 2019, the technology promises a travel speed of 750 miles per hour, meaning it may someday be able to take travelers from LA to Las Vegas in 20 minutes. The company is planning to have the "airplane without wings" on commercial tracks in China and Abu Dhabi over the next couple of years.

Japanese billionaire to be sent to moon by SpaceX says he'll bring along architects and other artists

2018-09-18T14:08:00-04:00

Elon Musk has revealed Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa as the potential first passenger to be launched to the moon by Musk's private aerospace company, SpaceX.

Ranked the 18th richest person in Japan, Mr. Maezawa is the founder of the online fashion retail website Zozotown. He is also known for having dropped $110 million on a painting by the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat last year at a Sotheby's auction. The price tag for reserving a spot on Musk's first launch was, reportedly, much more than what he paid for the Basquiat masterpiece.

The Big Falcon Rocket, which will take Maezawa to space—and which Musk says will allow his company to build a base on the moon, colonize Mars, and enable a must faster commercial travel on Earth—has not yet been built. SpaceX's other major venture thus far, the Falcon Heavy, which is a reusable heavy lift launch vehicle, took nearly twice as long to complete than expected.

That said, the tech tycoon, echoed by Musk, said he could board th...

Major flaws in Elon Musk's public transit plans for Los Angeles

2018-08-31T15:23:00-04:00

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is back at it again with more outlandish ideas to solve Los Angeles' traffic. Earlier this month, Musk's latest venture–The Boring Company–resuscitated its flawed proposal to dig new car tunnels for Los Angeles, this time to connect the Red Line subway with Dodger Stadium [...] The Chicago tunnel idea is bad enough, but the Dodger Stadium plan is exceptionally poor even if one takes Musk's promises at face value.

Alon Levy pokes holes in Elon Musk's public transit plans for Los Angeles. Musk's plan involves tunneling under Sunset Boulevard between the Dodger Stadium and one of three Red Line stops: Vermont/Sunset, Vermont/Santa Monica, or Vermont/Beverly. Levy cites major issues with construction, capacity, alignment with the city's existing transit, and overall regional impact.

How big tech companies are shaping US city development

2018-06-25T16:05:00-04:00

I’m not saying America’s cities are turning into dystopian technocapitalist hellscapes in which corporations operate every essential service and pull every civic string. But let’s take a tour of recent news from the metropolises.

Farhad Manjoo unpacks the extreme impact big tech companies have on US city construction citing cases from Amazon, Elon Musk's Boring Company, and Bird's electric scooters. Are these innovations simply breaking through the red tape of local government or are they dominating with no input from the public?

Elon Musk’s Boring Company selected to build Chicago airport high-speed transit tunnel

2018-06-15T14:53:00-04:00

Autonomous 16-passenger vehicles would zip back and forth at speeds exceeding 100 mph in tunnels between the Loop and O’Hare International Airport under a high-speed transit proposal being negotiated between Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s City Hall and billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s The Boring Co., city and company officials have confirmed. Emanuel’s administration has selected Musk’s company from four competing bids to provide high-speed transportation between downtown and the airport.

Musk's Boring Co. beat out established engineering firms, including Mott MacDonald and JLC Infrastructure, even though it has famously been in business for less than two years and only has a test tunnel near the company's headquarters in the Los Angeles area to show for as construction experience.

Elon Musk plans on recycling excavated dirt into bricks for low-cost housing

2018-05-11T15:18:00-04:00

Back in March, Elon Musk announced that his Boring Company would be selling LEGO-like bricks made from leftover dirt, excavated to make way for his Boring tunnels. Land excavation is a costly endeavor and the question of "where will 550,000 cubic yards of dirt go?" poses many economic and environmental challenges. If the dirt is of good enough quality, it is often sent to other construction sites in need of filling, or to highways and other infrastructure projects. But, if it is deemed of poor quality, excavated land is sent off to landfills and quarries, or contamination facilities in a worst-case scenario. In the end, all options are expensive and time consuming.

Musk's brick approach is not an entirely bad way to address issues of leftover waste. How much of the land removed would be safe enough to use as material remains an obvious point of inquiry, but, recycling the earth that is decent enough into bricks could reduce costs as well as environmental impact. On Boring Company's ...

Plans for the first commercial Hyperloop system in the United Arab Emirates

2018-04-24T18:08:00-04:00

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HyperloopTT) recently signed an agreement with Aldar Properties PJSC, a leading real estate developer in Abu Dhabi, to begin construction on the first commercial Hyperloop system in the United Arab Emirates.

Rendering of HyperloopTT station in UAE, in collaboration with AN.ONYMOUS. Image: HyperloopTT.

The first phase of construction will begin with a 6 mile stretch of development between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Design for the Hyperloop pylon is a collaboration with MAD architects, while the station design is in collaboration with AN.ONYMOUS. The agreement also includes building a Hyperloop XO Square Innovation Center and Visitor Center. This section is located close to the Expo 2020 site and Al Maktoum International Airport, with the goal of having it up and running in time for Expo 2020.

Rendering of HyperloopTT station in UAE, in collaboration with AN.ONYMOUS. Image: HyperloopTT.

The Hyperloop system, first presented by Elon Musk, will move pe...

Boring Company to start selling LEGO-like interlocking bricks made from tunneling rock

2018-03-27T12:18:00-04:00

Elon Musk announced that the Boring Company will sell LEGO-like interlocking bricks made from rock that his tunneling machines excavate from the earth. Musk stated these bricks will be sold in "kits" and will be rated to withstand California's earthquakes.

The date of availability or cost of this latest product is unknown. While his company has only started digging shorter tunnels there is not enough upturned rock to begin making these bricks yet.

Elon Musk starts digging for the Hyperloop in D.C.; Richard Branson plans to bring it to India first

2018-02-22T15:47:00-05:00

Elon Musk’s tunnel-boring project has received more vague government approval for its equally vague plans to build an underground hyperloop between New York and Washington, DC. Last week, Washington, DC’s Department of Transportation issued a preliminary permit to Musk’s Boring Company to start digging at an abandoned lot in the northeast section of the city, according to The Washington Post.

The extend of the building permit for Musk's The Boring Company is still vague though and currently limited to an empty parking lot at 53 New York Avenue NE next to a Mc Donald's. As the Washington Post reports: "The District’s Department of Transportation is figuring out what other permits the Boring Company would need to cut under city roads and other public spaces."

Hold on to your pants.

Meanwhile in India, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, and now also Chairman of Virgin Hyperloop One, is spearheading efforts to connect Mumbai with Pune via magnetically levitated pod travel within the next five to seven years, cut down travel time from several hours to 25 minutes, and make the nation with its population of 1.3 billion people home of the first operating Hyperloop line.

Dear Elon Musk: keep your hands off our public infrastructure!

2017-12-28T16:18:00-05:00

Recently, Elon Musk shared his perceptions during a tech industry conference that public transit is both inconvenient and dangerous. “It’s a pain in the ass,” he said. “That’s why everyone doesn’t like it. And there’s like a bunch of random strangers, one of who might be a serial killer, OK, great. And so that’s why people like individualized transport, that goes where you want, when you want.”

Elon Musk has had his sights set on various ways of 'disrupting' America's public transportation system for some time now. Most notably, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has been experimenting with the idea of creating underground tunnels for a Hyperloop system that he swears cities are giving the go ahead on despite some public skepticism.

However, after recent comments were made, many of those who have spent years working on public transport are criticizing Musk for stepping out of his lane. As an extremely wealthy person who keeps expressing a strong distaste for the public, Musk may not be the best person to tackle public infrastructure projects that millions of those less fortunate depend on.

Geoff Manaugh reports on the US' obsession with the Hyperloop and charismatic mega-projects alike

2017-07-27T17:34:00-04:00

Still, the trouble with the Hyperloop is not its breathless gee-whizzery. It’s the fact that it mistakes the charismatic mega-project for a viable solution to current problems. If the Hyperloop’s purpose is to address large-scale urban mobility, then there are many other options already deserving of public funding and attention—ones that do not require a hard rebooting of the entire urban world to be realized.

Musk’s visions are valuable because they show that even people far outside the field of urban planning can be frustrated with the world others have built for us. They, too, should have a say.

It’s great set design, but terrible city planning. Tunnels might abruptly end where investors fear to tread; driverless cars might be blocked from crossing bridges managed by rival tech firms. As for the Hyperloop, it is a P.R. coup for Elon Musk—and a project that, if realized, would undoubtedly be a thrill to experience. But it is by no means the solution that most people have been waiting for, other than the journalists wondering what story they might cover next.

Elon Musk tweets about receiving an approval for an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop

2017-07-20T13:24:00-04:00

Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop.

NY-DC in 29 mins?...

Elon Musk unveils his plan to colonize Mars with a million humans

2017-06-22T12:37:00-04:00

“It would be quite fun to be on Mars because you would have gravity that is about 37% of that of Earth, so you would be able to lift heavy things and bound around,” [Elon Musk] adds, predicting that journey times could eventually be cut to 30 days.

Aside from the money, specific technology, and solid timeframe, Elon Musk has figured out a way to get to Mars. The colonization plan, which is designed to place about 1 million people on the planet in 40-100 years using a yet-to-be constructed ship that would carry 100 passengers per trip, needs more financial backers before Musk can definitively settle on a launch date. Many scientists have objected to the plan on various technological grounds, although one brought up the problem of potentially contaminating alien life forms:

Prof Andrew Coates, who works on the ExoMars rover at University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said that the question of whether present or past life existed on Mars needed to be answered before a manned mission, which could contaminate the surface, could be considered. “There’s a moral imperative to keep Mars as it is for the moment. Until we’ve conclusively answered that question we should keep our feet on the ground ... going there wou...

Elon Musk confirms Boring Tunnels are for Hyperloop

2017-05-22T17:10:00-04:00

Since the company’s introduction, many (including Futurism) have speculated that the tunnels’ true purpose was to work in tandem with the Hyperloop. This is the real clincher here. It seems like The Boring Company isn’t just going to be for cars. “The electric skate can transport automobiles, goods, and/or people. And if one adds a vacuum shell, it is now a Hyperloop Pod which can travel at 600+ miles per hour,” the site explains.

Back in December, the business magnate Elon Musk tweeted his frustration of being stuck in LA traffic along with a half-joking suggestion of building a tunnel to fix his gridlocked woes.

Well as it turns out, this simple musing has become a full-blown startup. The Boring Company, it is called, hopes to build a series of underground tunnels that will save Angelenos from such "soul-destroying traffic." The company has already found a way to dig tunnels at a much more cost effective and efficient rate and is now revealing the tunnel's potential to work in tandem with the Hyperloop.