Vegas tunnel

Las Vegas will be the site of Elon Musk's The Boring Company's very first paying customer. Its big convention center is expanding to 200 acres with a two-mile walk to go from one end to the other end.

Two tubes running autonomous electric vehicles and one pedestrian tube will come equipped with WiFi, video surveillance, escalators. They will run underneath Las Vegas Convention Center to make getting around much faster for visitors. 

Digging started when the tunnel boring machine (TBM) arrived on site in October. The whole project should be ready for the Consumer Electronics Show in January of 2021.

photo

Boring tech

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

SpaceX, Tesla, The Boring Co., they all take existing technology to the next level . . faster than their competition. They're all pace setters in their industries.

 The Boring Co. exists to solve the problem of "Soul-destroying traffic" by making roads . . 

"go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels. Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight and won't fall on your head. . .The key to making this work is increasing tunneling speed and dropping costs by a factor of 10 or more – this is the goal of The Boring Company."

They think they can do that by making tunneling machines much more powerful and fast. At the upper end, today's tunneling can cost a billion dollars per mile. They plan to triple the machine's power and to run tunneling at the same time as building the supporting structure. 

Huge, innovative goals. If they succeed, this will be the third industry to be transformed by the vision of Elon Musk.

Boring bricks

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Here's a cool business innovation: when you dig up tons of dirt and you figure out how to use it for something practical, something that someone needs and will gladly pay for.

The Boring Company builds tunnels underground - so they literally have tons of dirt on their hands. It's expensive, according to the website, to collect and haul away. So they're making bricks out of the dirt, construction bricks.



For additional cost-cutting, they may even use these bricks immediately on the structure that supports the tunnels. And this process will be environmentally friendly, as (again) the website says, because "concrete production accounts for 4.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions," and these bricks will replace the equivalent of concrete.

Boring Chicago

To get from downtown Chicago to O'Hare Airport can take up to an hour. The city asked for bids from private companies who could build a transit system that will cut that time down to twenty minutes, and The Boring Company was selected for the job. 

The Boring Company is building hyperloop tunnels under Los Angeles, but this is different. Beneath Chicago they're going to build "loop" tunnels for electric "skates" (self-driving platforms or vehicles) traveling 100+ mph. 



“Each vehicle will carry up to 16 passengers, plus their luggage, and will depart from O’Hare and from Block 37 as frequently as every 30 seconds." They think the system can bring travel time down to twelve minutes.

The company has raised investments of about $112 million, and Chicago is not paying for anything here. 

"[Elon] Musk’s own investment represents over 90% . . and the other investors are early employees. No venture capitalist or investment firm w[as] involved."

So Elon has invested over $90 million in The Boring Co. 

(cont'd tomorrow)

Boring

The Boring Company is another one of Elon Musk's. They're actually building hyperloop tunnels under Los Angeles. They've completed one 305 feet in length that starts at the SpaceX parking lot, and they want to extend it toward the airport.

They need permissions from several levels of governments and commissions, lots of red tape. Culver City (within Los Angeles county), for example, heard a presentation from a Boring executive in January but they definitely have concerns. 

Another tunnel, 6.5 miles in length, is planned by the Boring Co. as "proof of concept" - to show that this thing could really work. 

"In the meantime, Musk is apparently already driving around the first tunnel in a Tesla."

(hyperloop update cont'd tomorrow)