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. — New Yorker
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... View full entry
Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. — Elon Musk, Twitter
NY-DC in 29 mins?... View full entry
“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. — The Guardian
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... View full entry
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. — Futurism
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... View full entry
Elon Musk has received the go-ahead for another wild transit idea: a tunnel beneath Los Angeles. Intended to ease the city’s notorious traffic, it’s not clear where Musk intends to dig, besides that it will start near his Hawthorne office, about 5 minutes from LAX. Musk’s been railing... View full entry
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has a pretty good sense of humor, but sometimes we can't tell when he's just joking or mulling his next big idea.
For example, on Saturday Musk took to Twitter to say out loud what every traffic-plagued Los Angeles resident is silently screaming inside: The city is a gridlocked hellscape.
"Traffic is driving me nuts," wrote Musk.
But he didn't stop there. He also raised the idea of boring through obstacles to alleviate traffic woes.
— mashable.com
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status... View full entry
While solar panels have been subsidized in many cities for a while now, the blocky, rectangular panels aren’t heavily implemented in part because they tend to appear as, well, an addition, rather than a constitutive element of home design. That's about to change, as Tesla has announced a... View full entry
Why place individual solar panels on top of a pre-existing roof when you could just build an entire roof with solar technology integrated into it? Elon Musk, CEO of the financially underperforming Solar City and Tesla, sees it as an obvious solution. According to CNNMoney, he said that "If your... View full entry
Sixty-five hundred people and a sizable compliment of robots will work in the enormous, solar-panel topped, rail-adjacent Gigafactory when it opens in 2017, a structure which is described as a "joint venture" between Tesla, Panasonic and other supply partners. In this case, the drive to... View full entry
SolarCity's solar panels with Tesla's electric vehicles and stationary storage batteries was "what the world needs, the ultimate solution" to a sustainable-energy future.
"As a combined automotive and power storage and power generation company, the potential is there for Tesla to be a trillion-dollar market cap company," [Musk] added. [...]
Musk said costs for both companies would go down significantly after the merger, but he did not give specifics.
— reuters.com
Elon Musk already sits on the board and owns 22% of the Buffalo-based SolarCity, "the leading installer of residential solar panels" in the US. Musk is convinced that the merger is a no-brainer, but according to Reuters, analysts aren't so smitten with the prospect."While we don't doubt that some... View full entry
On March 31, [Elon Musk's] Tesla Motors unveiled its long-promised Model 3, a $35,000 electric car that will go 215 miles per charge. The market response suggests to some the potential as a category killer, not just in electric vehicles, but mainstream cars in general: in the week since, more than 325,000 Model 3s have been pre-ordered by people putting down $1,000 per reservation, the company said April 7.
Even deep Tesla skeptics call this demand unprecedented.
— qz.com
For more on the auto industry and car culture:The "Impossible" Car – Faraday Future's lead designer, Richard Kim, on One-to-One #17Lake Flato Architects splits reservation cost for Tesla Model 3 with employeesWired takes a look inside Tesla's car factory of the futureDawn of the self-driving... View full entry
[MIT's] team was awarded the top prize, and...Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands were the next runners-up. [...]
Musk took questions from the audience on everything from what inspired him to create the Hyperloop idea (being stuck in LA traffic), what advice he had for the winning teams (lots of dry runs), and what "crazy idea" he is working on next (electric jets — Musk says he thinks he's close to something, but said precious little about how they'd work).
— theverge.com
MIT's design will go on to compete at the Hyperloop test-run competition this summer, hosted at a bespoke race track being built near Hawthorne, CA – SpaceX's headquarters. Here's the complete list of winners from the competition, hosted by Texas A&M University:Best Overall Design... View full entry
[Hyperloop] has the swagger of Elon Musk rather than the stigma of a public bureaucracy. Second, it’s going to be, like, a billion times faster than HSR. [...]
And yet, this combination of enthusiasm and magnetism doesn’t buy farmland. It doesn’t ease eminent domain takings. It doesn’t blast through bedrock or relocate utilities. It doesn’t design station area plans. [...]
The very same mountains, cities, canals, farmers, and habitats that complicate HSR also complicate Hyperloop.
— cp-dr.com
For past reporting on Hyperloop in all its emerging forms:Designing the Hyperspace: UCLA studio imagines Hyperloop's future in CaliforniaA first look at the Hyperloop's real tubes and imagined winged terminalsUnpacking the Hyperloop's lofty promisesElon Musk launches Hyperloop Pod Competition to... View full entry
"Robots hate litter," reads a health and safety sign. "Please don't give them any more reasons to overthrow mankind." It's also fair to say that naming your robots makes the whole process of constructing cars vaguely ridiculous. "Wolverine and Iceman lift the cars to tramline two," our tour guide informs us with the zeal of a true believer, adding, as he did after virtually every sentence, that this is 'kind of amazing'. — wired.co.uk
Related stories in the Archinect news:Multitasking Musk: the busy life of Elon MuskA look inside Tesla's growing Gigafactory: "It will blow your mind."Dawn of the self-driving car: testing out Tesla's autopilot function View full entry
Elon Musk has plenty of other ideas. If anyone asks and he has a moment to explain, he'll talk distractedly of as-yet-unrealized concepts—a vertical takeoff-and-landing supersonic electric jet for long-distance travel; an entirely new form of transport that he's named the Hyperloop... He is a man with the rare problem of having more ideas for how to radically change our world than the time to realize them.
Still, you do what you can. And so this Monday evening, his mind is on space suits.
— GQ
Related:A look inside Tesla's growing Gigafactory: "It will blow your mind."Unpacking the Hyperloop's lofty promisesElon Musk launches Hyperloop Pod Competition to university students and engineersChallenging the space-age Manifest Destiny narrative, as Elon Musk vies to move humans to MarsDid... View full entry
