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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%. — Technology Review
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... View full entry
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.
— Teslarati
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — the Verge
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — urbanize.la
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... View full entry
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.
— New York Times
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... View full entry
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.
— Chicago Tribune
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. View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. ... View full entry
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 Verge
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... View full entry
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.” — Quartz
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... View full entry
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
