Nobody likes traffic and sadly we all experience it to varying degrees on mostly predictable schedules. Some places have it worse than others, especially L.A, and this is exactly what drove Elon Musk to the point of deciding to start yet another company, with the sole purpose of building tunnels to literally work around the problem - The Boring Company. It began as a subsidiary of SpaceX in 2016, shortly afterwards the first Tunnel Boring Machine was purchased and began drilling on their property. It split off into an independent entity in 2018, and they opened the first mile-long test tunnel in Hawthorne, California in December of that year.

Their overarching goal is to eliminate traffic which, until fleets of autonomous vehicles appear, will steadily worsen as the population increases, along with the availability and affordability of personal transportation. It makes perfect sense that going down is the most suitable direction, flying cars sure sound like the most fun, but realistically it's a huge engineering headache, not to mention a safety nightmare. Underground there's nothing to run into, allowing much higher speeds and more direct routes without having to navigate existing infrastructure, resulting in greatly decreased travel times. There's no worry of gravity interfering unexpectedly and essentially unlimited space, if tunnels begin to reach capacity just go one level deeper, ad infinitum!

It's not exactly clear why this idea has not caught on earlier, speed certainly is a large factor for these projects, with traditional tunneling machines progressing around 40-50 feet per day. Unsurprisingly, after purchasing two conventional machines to get their bearings, The Boring Company set about creating their own tunneller which promises to eventually eclipse existing performance.

Prufrock

The long-term target is to be faster than the average garden snail, which might not sound like much, but when leaving a 12 feet (3.7 m) diameter hole behind it actually seems reasonable. It's designed to tunnel at a speed greater than 1 mile per week (6 times faster than their previous vehicle), and this is still 4-5 times slower than the snail, but they're getting there!

What else sets it apart from the pack is it's ability to perform continuous mining, since the tunnel walls are added behind it while continually digging. It's also fitted with so-called 'surface launch/porpoising', meaning that mining begins and ends at the surface without requiring any existing pit construction, as is typically the case. Naturally it's fully electric which reduces atmospheric emissions as well as ventilation requirements. Prufrock’s medium-term goal is to exceed 1/10 of human walking speed, which is 7 miles per day and seems achievable within a few years.

Projects

Las Vegas Loop

So far the team have completed two tunnels, the first test in California and the second in Las Vegas. In 2019 they were commissioned to dig underneath the Las Vegas Convention Centre with the aim of reducing a 25-minute walk to a two minute ride (in Teslas, of course). The 1.7 mile track was opened to the public in April 2021 to slightly lacklustre reviews, since high-speed, autonomous cars were promised that have yet to come to light. Surely this is only a matter of time until Tesla are able to provide the necessary software and overall the project is a great demonstration of potential, as it was certainly useful in ferrying 15,000 to 17,000 passengers daily during CES 2022.

It's already had expansion plans approved to extend into a full loop around the busier parts of the city, eventually connecting to the airport, and two hotels have already requested direct connections for their patrons - a very wise business decision which others are sure to follow.

Indeed May 2021 saw the ground-breaking of the tunnel to Resorts World which then surfaced at it's destination in February 2022.

Giga Texas

Plans were submitted to the city of Austin, Texas to build a tunnel on the Giga Factory property and it's not entirely clear what it's purpose will be yet, but one of the great benefits of owning so many different ventures is allowing them to enhance each other as they innovate in ways not previously imagined.

Hyperloop

One of the company's biggest ambitions was to build a direct connection between Washington, DC and New York that takes less than 30 minutes, by travelling at 600+ MPH. To achieve this would require hyperloop technology - a sealed, low-pressure tunnel allowing a transport pod to essentially 'float' along the line at incredibly high speeds due to the extremely low air resistance. Whilst there’ve been few updates about this project in recent years, from 2015 - 2019 SpaceX hosted an annual competition for teams to design and construct pod prototypes that showcase the technical feasibility of the concept, and we can hope to see more news about this in future.

Competitors

For a new and relatively unpopular technology, there are at least two other major players in the industry worth mentioning;

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies
- Founded in 2013, they own an R&D center in France, a Hyperport in Germany and a commercial prototype in the UAE.

Virgin Hyperloop
- Created in 2014, they performed the world's first human testing of their product in November 2020 out in the Nevada desert, reaching 107 miles per hour.

Products

As an unusual and hilarious method of fundraising, The Boring Company sometimes release limited-edition products for quick cash injections. So far they've proven incredibly popular, selling out in just a few days and sparking public debate with their unique nature.

The Not-A-Flamethrower

Exactly as it's name suggests, it's not what you might expect! Being more akin to a novelty fire-lighter than a dangerous weapon, it's nothing more complicated than a basic gas blowtorch that could be made in a home workshop with the right tools and know-how, but certainly an eye-catching conversation starter to display on the shelf.

Burnt Hair - Singed

The most recent offering and what might have started out as a joke, was a perfume touted as 'The Essence of Repugnant Desire'. It remains to be seen just how appealing the fragrance will be as deliveries are set for Q1 2023, after selling 30,000 bottles just days after being announced on twitter, possibly to help fund the purchase of the platform itself.

For The Boring Company progress has been slow and steady and Elon himself admits that so far the company could be considered a hobby, receiving very little of his attention. Yet their achievements should not be underplayed, especially when taking into consideration it's short six-year lifespan. Given enough time and resources it could easily gain worldwide popularity once more successful examples are deployed, and just like all of Musk's enterprises, demand is likely to exceed supply for a long time. For now, the reach to financial-viability is the focus, just as we've seen with the dramatic reduction of cost per kg to orbit thanks to SpaceX's reusable rocketry, they must continue to bring down the cost and complexity of the technology until it's ready for global adoption. Even if Earth doesn't show quick-uptake, the benefits of cheap, rapid & automated tunnel building for Mars and beyond go without saying.

The Boring Company